Gwadar port, an investment of the Belt and Road Initiative

One of the great quality of the People's Republic of China in its internationalization strategy (which can be found also in Africa and Greece) is to seize opportunities and bet where everyone else quit. In this perspective we put the Beijing's titanic investment in the development of Gwadar's Pakistani port, entrusted to China for 43 years in 2015, following a visit by Premier Li Keqiang in 2013. The port is part of President Xi Jinping's most ambitious project for 'One Belt, One Road' by land and sea. The establishment of an infrastructure system linking the East to the West is growing fast: one of the latest and most striking developments has been the integration of the railway line for goods between London and Beijing. It will take eighteen days to move heavy goods between the two cities, with resulting economic benefits not only for the two capitals but also for all the countries along the trail.

The investment in Gwadar Port is part of this perspective. Only four years ago, the seaport was in decline, with loss of traffic, continual malfunctions and garbage everywhere. It is astonishing also because it is a relatively modern building: even if it was designed in 1954, but inaugurated only in 2007. The Chinese have been able to put their hands on the seaport, clean it up and plan an ambitious expansion: new berths will be accompanied by deeper dredging to allow the docking to ships of 70,000 tons. The port project is complement to a number of other infrastructure investments, to which the region's residents will benefit: an airport, a new highway linking the country to the national network, a desalination plant to ensure drinking water to the city and the establishment of a special economic zone by 2020. Enterprises that will produce within the area will be eligible for tax exemption for 23 years and will have obvious logistics facilities for the export. Beijing also opened a direct channel between the two nations: in November it completed the highway connecting Gwadar to the nearest city to Pakistan, Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region.
Of course, there are also problems: above all the risk of Islamic terrorism. In August 2016 an explosion at Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, the area where Gwadar is located, has caused 95 victims. Over the last seven years, there have been over one thousand victims for the attacks of the local separatist movement fighting against Islamabad. Attacks that are instigated, according to the local government, by the United States, which would have supplied the rebels with arms, and that for years have a controversial relationship, made by mutual distrust mixed to close cooperation, with Pakistan. Gwadar itself was proposed by the former President Ali Bhutto to Richard Nixon for the construction of an American naval base during the cold war. Washington refused and now Beijing has not missed the opportunity. The Chinese wager is also played on the complicated political balance of the regions connecting the port to Kashgar: from Balochistan to the entire Pakistan, from Kashmir to Xinjiang, the highway that moves goods to the rest of the world runs between unstable areas.
Beijing, as demonstrated by its penetration in Africa and investment in Piraeus, is not afraid of gambles. China thanks to the massive investments resulting from the combination of capitalism and statism, is successfully trying to impose itself as the center of global trade and the construction of a silk road, by land and by sea, will only bring added benefit to the country of Xi Jinping. The saying 'all roads lead to Rome' could soon be updated in 'all roads lead to Beijing'.