In advance of the Pakistan Prime Minister’s visit to China, Pakistani Senator Mushahid Hussain told Sputnik on May 21 that Phase 1 of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has laid the foundation for Phase 2, which will focus on agriculture, education, industry, IT, and mining.
Senator Hussain noted that the first phase focused on government-to-government deals (G2G), but Phase 2 will shift more towards business-to-business (B2B). The $20 billion investment by China during Phase 1 resulted in the creation of 255,000 jobs, the adding of 8,000 MW of electricity to the national grid, and the building of 600 kilometers of roads and motorways.
The CPEC project began in 2013 with a Memorandum of Understanding between the then-Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardar and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. It is an infrastructure project focused on transportation and power plant construction that would extend from Kashgar (Xinjiang, China) to the deep-sea port of Gwadar (Balochistan, Pakistan), providing China direct, secure access to the Arabian Sea, and spanning roughly 3,000 kilometers.
In May 2025, a trilateral agreement among China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan was signed by their foreign ministers, including branching the project into Afghanistan. This is vital to land-locked Afghanistan. The CPEC is seen as a foundational project in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and economic development in the region could become the basis for resolving current conflicts.
