Myanmar : China Wants Action on SEZ in Arakan as Locals Cast Wary Eye

China Wants Action on SEZ in Arakan 

as Locals Cast Wary Eye

In a visit to Naypyidaw on Monday, a senior Chinese diplomat said Beijing wanted to see “sooner implementation” of the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in western Burma’s Arakan State, as some local residents cast a wary eye on the Asian giant’s economic ambitions.

Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, the head of the Chinese delegation, said he hoped to see development of the Kyaukphyu project soon, and that “China wants to take part in the tasks of ensuring development of the southwestern part of Myanmar,” during a meeting with President Thein Sein, according to the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Chinese projects in Arakan State include controversial natural gas and oil pipelines from Kyaukphyu to China’s Yunnan province. Construction of the dual pipelines, known as the Shwe gas project, is complete, and the piping of gas and oil northward is scheduled to begin soon. Oil storage tanks on Maday Island and natural gas storage tanks on Mala Island have also been installed.

Thein Sein on Monday said he “thanks China for the Kyaukphyu industrial zone project” and expressed hope that the “region could see development” as a result, but there were no details provided on the nature of the agreement nor what kind of support the Chinese would provide.

Local residents said there were no indications that development of the SEZ in Kyaukphyu had yet begun, nor had the local population been briefed about plans for the project.

In December, Deputy Labor Minister Myint Thein—the chairman of the SEZ Implementation Committee—paid a weeklong visit to Kyaukphyu and told residents at a meeting there that the project would be implemented in accordance with the desires of the local people.

“Kyaukphyu is a center of Chinese interest, so they will want to begin it sooner and quicker,” said Aye Zan, secretary of the Kyaukphyu SEZ Monitoring Committee, which was formed earlier this year after local residents called for collaboration on the project in terms of social and environmental impact assessments.

“But the authorities have not shared any plan with us,” he added.

The government has invited foreign firms to invest in the SEZ project, but there remains a lack of basic infrastructure, such as roads, electricity provision and port facilities, in the area.

“No development at the project area is seen, we only know that the ‘master plan’ for the project has been drawn up in collaboration with a Japanese company,” said Hla Myo Kyaw, a resident of Kyaukphyu and a member of the Kyaukphyu SEZ Monitoring Committee.

The residents said basic information about the SEZ—the project site, the size of the zone and whether local residents would need to be relocated—had not yet been provided to them.

A delegation of the Arakan State-based Rakhine Nationalities Development Party was among a group of Burmese political parties that visited China in April at the invitation of the External Communication Department of the Chinese Communist Party. It was not clear whether Beijing’s ambitions in Kyaukphyu were discussed.

Some locals are wary of Chinese-backed projects in Arakan State, with the Shwe gas project criticized by many for a lack of transparency and its negative environmental and social impacts, including forced displacements and harm to local fishermen’s livelihoods.

The monitoring committee said it would stand with local residents and air any concerns raised.

“If the villagers have to move for the project, it cannot happen,” Hla Myo Kyaw said, “as no one will accept relocation from their homes.”

In December 2012, the rights group Arakan Oil Watch reported that the Chinese state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group would manage the implementation of the Kyaukphyu SEZ on Ramree Island, where more than 200,000 people reside.

The report said the zone would require an initial investment of US$8.3 billion and a total of $89.2 billion over 35 years, using 120-square-km of land and 70-square-km of waterways, according to a feasibility study by CITIC Construction.

An 800-km long rail way connecting Kyaukphyu to Ruili in China’s Yunnan province will also reportedly soon be built, with its planned completion in 2015. The railway will pass through cities and villages in Arakan State, Magway and Mandalay divisions, and Shan State, as the Shwe gas and oil pipelines currently do.

Resource from:

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/38463

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Xinjiang-Gwadar Port: China for fast work on economic corridor

Xinjiang-Gwadar Port: 

China for fast work on economic corridor

Ambassador of China Sun Weidong has stressed on quickly developing an economic corridor from Xinjiang to Gwadar Port to make Pakistan an economically vibrant state.

“Both friends—China and Pakistan are making plans for setting up a task force for the purpose,” he told Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Wednesday, according to an official statement.

Referring to the Chinese premier’s recent visit, the ambassador said that Pakistan was one of the first countries he visited. He also said that the Chinese government expects a visit from the Pakistani prime minister soon.

Ambassador Weidong also expressed the desire to open new areas of corporation between the two countries. He said that Pakistan has always supported China in its crucial issues such as Taiwan, South China Sea, Tibet and Xingjian.

He also admired Pakistani support in both regional and international forums.

Condemning the recent incidents in Quetta, the ambassador said that his government was against any incident that destabilises Pakistan. He highlighted support to Pakistan in economy, infrastructure development, energy, people to people contact and security.

Chaudhry Nisar stressed the need for Chinese collaboration for economic development.

He said the new government’s priorities were development, fighting terrorism and issue of sovereignty which has been threatened by the drone strikes.

He acknowledged that the Gwadar Port would change the strategic and economic importance of the entire region.

Resource from:

http://tribune.com.pk/story/565818/xinjiang-gwadar-port-china-for-fast-work-on-economic-corridor/

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China-Pakistan deal on economic corridor passing through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir[PoK]

China-Pakistan deal on economic corridor passing through [PoK]

To link Xinjiang to the port of Gwadar on Arabian Sea

China has indicated it will go ahead with building infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) despite India’s concerns, signing a memorandum of understanding with Pakistan on a transport corridor expected to pass through the disputed region.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who on Thursday wrapped up a two-day visit to Pakistan following his trip to India, called on both countries to “start formulating a long-term plan for the China-Pakistan economic corridor project and gradually push forward its construction”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Both countries signed an MoU to cooperate on a “long-term” plan on the corridor, among 11 agreements announced during Mr. Li’s visit.

Chinese planners have called for a transport and economic corridor to link China’s far-western Xinjiang region to the port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, which China helped build and is now managing. 

The corridor, they hope, will speed up development in Xinjiang, which has seen intermittent unrest, and also open up a new route for China’s energy imports from West Asia. The corridor will pass through PoK, which borders Xinjiang and provides the only feasible transport link between China and Pakistan.

While India has made its concerns known over the projects considering the region’s disputed status, China has appeared to push forward. China would “step up” its cooperation with Pakistan by “building the oil pipeline and railroads linking the countries”, Wang Dehua, a South Asia scholar at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told The Global Times, a Communist Party-run tabloid known for its nationalistic views, on Thursday.

Last year, both countries completed a pre-feasibility study for a railway line linking Kashgar, in Xinjiang, to Havelian, running through the Khunjerab Pass and PoK.

Asked about India’s concerns, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said on Thursday, “China’s position on the Kashmir issue is clear and consistent”.

“We hope India and Pakistan can solve the relevant issue through dialogue,” he said.

Chinese officials have made a similar argument to their Indian counterparts when pressed about the projects.

While Mr. Hong did not further elaborate China’s stand, officials had, in the past, described their projects as being carried out “without prejudice” to disputes between India and Pakistan. The projects, they said, were purely commercial, with China not deviating from its stated position of “neutrality” on the issue.

India has rejected that argument, pointing out that China had itself expressed strong opposition to Indian cooperation with Vietnam on exploration projects in the waters of the South China Sea, which are contested by China and a number of other countries.

The Global Times in an editorial on Thursday said India “must accept and adapt” to the friendship between China and Pakistan as Beijing “cannot scale down this relationship” to address its concerns.

“India has long been sensitive to the Sino-Pakistan relationship, even suspecting that China secretly helped Pakistan master nuclear technology. These suspicions are groundless but cannot easily be dispelled,” the editorial said.

Resource from:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/chinapakistan-deal-on-economic-corridor-passing-through-pok/article4743616.ece

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China : China's Port of Call

China's Port of Call

China's control of Gwadar through the China Overseas Port Holding Company is the latest move towards its ambitious plan to safeguard its Persian Gulf route, through which over 60 per cent of its oil supplies flow. China also gets a potential naval base in the Arabian Sea, linked by road to its eastern Xinjiang province.

Last year, when Pakistan's Ambassador to China Masood Khan talked of a proposal to lease the port, none of the visiting Pakistani journalists in Beijing believed him. Pakistan's third port was indeed completed after China financed 83 per cent of its $248 million (Rs.14 billion) cost in 2007 but was operated by PSA on a 40-year lease. PSA backed out earlier this year after a dispute over the non-allotment of land by Pakistan's government. China stepped in as part of an ambitious plan to open up an energy and trade corridor from the Gulf to its poorer western regions.

So vital is the port to Chinese interests that the prospects of a simmering insurgency in Balochistan-over 3,000 people have been killed in violence since 2004-have not deterred it. The Pakistan army has also reportedly assured China that it would protect its personnel working on the project.

Pakistani officials say both countries plan to establish a huge naval base in the port that is 460 km west of its sole naval base, Karachi. This request was first made by former defence minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar during prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's 2011 Beijing visit. Pakistan has now reportedly told China that it wants China's navy to maintain a regular presence in the Arabian Sea. Pakistan's military could use Gwadar as an alternative to Karachi to prevent another blockade of its maritime options by the Indian Navy, as in the 1971 war.

Pakistani defence ministry officials say the move to hand the port to China is a response to India's growing economy and regional heft. "Majority of China's port facilities in the Indian Ocean are dual use and there is the possibility that China can rapidly turn them for military use in future,” says Asim Qadeer Rana, an Islamabad-based foreign policy expert. Rana believes India's interest in Iran's Chahbahar port is a response to China's presence in Gwadar. "We believe that this will give strategic depth to Pakistan's maritime assets, commercially and militarily,” a senior official in Pakistan's Ministry of Defence told india today.

India sees this as part of a strategy to surround it with a "string of pearls” -with China having already established bases in Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Chittagong in Bangladesh. On February 6, India's Defence Minister A.K. Antony told the media that Chinese control of the port was "a matter of concern”. Indian defence brass are more than just concerned. China's presence in Gwadar poses a strategic dilemma of a kind not faced previously. "It could seriously complicate our response. In the time of war, we could risk dragging China into the picture,” a senior Indian defence official says. But what is more worrying is Pakistan and China's rapid expansion of the Karakoram highway, which links Gwadar to Kashgar.

Chinese construction firms have almost completed a 335-km tarred road from Sost, a Pakistani frontier town on its border with China, to Gilgit, the capital of the Gilgit-Baltistan province. Expansion work is in progress on the rest of the 900-km road, to link the port to Pakistan's north-south Indus Highway, which will facilitate overland transport from Gwadar to China. It takes a merchant vessel over 20 days to cover the 10,000 km distance from the mouth of the Persian Gulf to Shanghai via the narrow Malacca straits. Gwadar will enable Chinese merchant ships to load cargo at Gwadar and sail to Europe via the Red Sea, saving 3,900 km.

China's prosperous eastern seaboard is some 3,000 km away from its remote western Xinjiang province. Gwadar, in comparison, is only 1,500 km away. "With the new highway, Chinese exporters would save time and money, and Pakistani businessmen could benefit,” says Mohammad Tariq, a senior Pakistani foreign affairs ministry official. Another official said the two countries are also planning a high speed railway track from Xinjiang to Gwadar, though this is still in the future.

Sources say China's long-term plans also include road and rail links through Afghanistan to the land-locked Central Asian states. "When this network is fully operational from Gwadar to Khunjerab (on the Gilgit-Baltistan border between Pakistan and China), Urumqi (capital of Xinjiang province), Beijing and Shanghai, it will give China alternative routes for its trade with West Asia and Europe, that will be much shorter than the one passing through Malacca,” he said.

China is a key weapons supplier to Pakistan, having provided the bulk of its battle tanks, fighter jets and warships. It has agreed to deliver six submarines to Pakistan's navy and sell light fighter aircraft for $3 billion (Rs.164 billion). At $12 billion (Rs.657 billion), trade between the two countries peaked in 2012. The transfer of the new port is likely to be the sheet anchor of that relationship.

Resource from: 

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/china-pakistan-persian-gulf-arabian-sea/1/257027.html

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