China, Pakistan strengthen economic cooperation with ambitious corridors, despite global challenges: Chinese Ambassador

ISLAMABAD  –   China to work with Pakistan to jointly build a growth corridor, a livelihood-enhancing corridor, an innovation corridor, a green corridor and an open corridor, said Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Jiang Zaidong.

As for the temporary difficulties faced by CPEC construction and even the entire China-Pakistan practical cooperation, there are both constraints from Pakistan’s security environment and the impact of the global economic downturn. He told reporters here that the first thing to solve is not what to do, but how to look at it. The key is to hold confidence.

“For example, Pakistan’s new government has only assumed office for a few months, and Pakistan’s GDP has returned from negative growth and achieved a positive growth of 2.4%.”

Pakistan’s CPI has dropped from 28.7% at the beginning of this year to 6.9% last month, reaching a new low in 44 months.

As for the long-standing foreign exchange reserve issue, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves rose to nearly $16 billion last month, reaching the highest over the past several years.

Therefore, when he visited Karachi and Lahore recently, I especially told Chinese and Pakistani entrepreneurs will thank the efforts made by Pakistani government under the leadership of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and to have confidence in your country’s development prospects.

The better Pakistan develops the more favourable conditions China and Pakistan have to promote cooperation.

As President Xi Jinping pointed out, conditions are not static. If you actively strive for them, they may get better. If you don’t work hard, they will definitely get worse. This is called “the matter depends on the individual.”

Sharing some personal opinions about Sino-Pak friendship, Ambassador Jiang said, “We are all-weather strategic cooperative partners and ironclad friends.”

Over the past 11 years, CPEC has indeed made outstanding contributions to Pakistan’s economic development. Pakistani friends often call CPEC a “game changer” for Pakistan. President Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz also spoke highly of CPEC, believing it to be the “cornerstone” of Pakistan’s development.

CPEC has brought to Pakistan a total of $25.4 billion in direct investment, created 236,000 jobs, and helped Pakistan add 510 kilometres of motorways, 8,220 megawatts of electricity and 886 kilometres of national core transmission grid.

During Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s visit to China in June this year, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang reached important consensus with him, emphasising the need to promote the aligning of high-quality “Belt and Road” cooperation with Pakistan’s development plan, and to forge an “upgraded version” of CPEC, which further pointed out the direction for CPEC construction in the new stage.

As Premier Li Qiang pointed out at a recent symposium held in China domestically, we should both recognize the general trend and strengthen our confidence, and also face up to the difficulties and respond to them positively. Of course, I am not blindly optimistic, but there are facts to support my views.

For example, Pakistan is a major agricultural country, and its cotton, mango and wheat production respectively ranks fifth, sixth and seventh in the world. Pakistan is also the world’s fourth largest producer of dairy products, but its modernisation level needs to be improved.

For this, one of our Chinese companies are cooperating with Pakistani side to establish a modern high-efficiency water-saving agriculture demonstration base covering an area of 660 thousand square meters, and will train 1,000 technical and management personnel and talents for Pakistani agriculture sector.

Another Chinese company has established buffalo embryo lab in Pakistan, and has exported buffalo embryos to China, and has also successfully launch dairy products production in Pakistan, exporting 4,000 tons to China each year.

Another company has developed new rapeseed varieties in Pakistan, increasing the rapeseed oil content by 20% and the oil yield by 10%. This year, it will promote the planting by 66 thousand hectares.

These are all proactive actions, trying to find a way out at the end of the road and open up a new chapter in the predicament.