Imran Khan’s China play threatens Middle East headache for Beijing
- The Pakistani prime minister has gone cap in hand to China in the hope it will partner Saudi Arabia and the IMF in bailing out his country
- But Beijing will be wary of getting dragged into the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran
The CPEC is a 15-year programme to connect China’s economy overland with the oil-rich Persian Gulf via restive Xinjiang and Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. Since the launch of the CPEC in 2015, power generation and infrastructure projects in Pakistan worth US$28 billion have either been completed or proceeded to advanced stages of construction.
“I think [the Chinese] are putting on a good front of being accommodating, and they will do their best to maintain a positive public narrative, but they had questions about [Khan’s] government before it took office, and the handling of CPEC and the China relationship writ large has given further cause for concern,” said Andrew Small, author of The China-Pakistan Axis.
Pakistan’s Khan slams IMF, then seeks bailout. Why the change?
Since assuming power after a July general election marred by allegations of favouritism by the powerful military and activist judiciary, the Khan administration has slashed development expenditure as part of an austerity drive to control Pakistan’s runaway fiscal deficits. It has also cut the envisioned value of CPEC to US$50 billion from US$62 billion, and ordered an audit of projects agreed by Sharif’s government.
While Khan is bound to receive a polite, attentive hearing from his Chinese partners, they are likely to have pressing questions and will want reassurances.
“I think they are still waiting for the dust to settle, which may not happen until after the Imran Khan visit. They are willing to give the new government more time to find its feet but there have been a lot of raised eyebrows in the last couple of months,” Small said.
Khan’s immediate priority is to secure China’s participation in a convoluted bailout for the Pakistani economy. He will arrive in Beijing days after securing a three-year US$6 billion financial assistance package from Saudi Arabia. Two days after the conclusion of his visit on November 5, Pakistani finance minister Asad Umar is expected to begin negotiations with the IMF for a medium-term programme.
As well as CPEC borrowings, China has loaned Pakistan US$6 billion since last year to increase its dwindling foreign exchange reserves. It is likely to acquiesce to Khan’s request for further financial support but only if Pakistan commits to the structural economic reforms required by the IMF. Khan’s government has slashed subsidies for utility bills, an unpopular inflationary measure, but it has no plans to reduce the size of Pakistan’s civil service or cut spending on defence.
“China may be willing to provide more assistance in conjunction with an IMF programme, just not as an alternative to one.
“China has already been providing financing but was quite clear that it wanted the new government to go to the IMF,” Small said.
Khan has posited that Chinese and Saudi financial assistance will reduce the amount Pakistan needs to borrow from the IMF, mitigating Pakistan’s susceptibility to US demands its CPEC debt be transparent. China wants to avoid such transparency because exposing the terms of CPEC project agreements could validate US criticism of the belt and road as a debt trap for emerging economies.
Pakistan risks Chinese anger by courting Saudi Arabia
The deal provided China with control of a third maritime facility in the western Indian Ocean, after Gwadar in Pakistan and Djibouti, across the Red Sea from Yemen where a Saudi-led Arab coalition has been fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015.
China has steered clear of Middle Eastern rivalries but the undisclosed terms of Pakistan’s deal with Saudi Arabia for US$6 billion in financial assistance brings complications for both the Khan administration and Beijing.
The Khan administration claims Riyadh’s aid came with no political strings attached but Saudi Arabia has long chafed at Pakistan’s neutrality in its regional rivalry with neighbouring Iran, particularly since it refused to join the Arab military coalition in Yemen three years ago.
“Saudi moves and investment in Pakistan are a set and established policy that seeks to better integrate Islamabad into Riyadh’s camp,” said Theodore Karasik, senior adviser at Gulf State Analytics, a geostrategic consultancy in Washington.
In Pakistan, Chinese money grapples with a Karachi-Lahore divide
As part of the bailout, Khan has invited the Saudis to invest in energy and mineral projects near Pakistan’s border with Iran. They include a multibillion-dollar oil refinery and strategic storage complex to be located at the Chinese-managed port of Gwadar, the centrepiece of CPEC.
But the prospective Saudi presence near Iran’s eastern border threatens to bring their proxy wars in the Middle East into the Gwadar area. The potential complications for Pakistan and China were made apparent on October 16, when 14 Iranian guards stationed near the border with Pakistan were kidnapped by militants of the Jaish al-Adl, an extremist Sunni faction active in the area. Pakistani security forces have been unable to locate the abductees, increasing the threat of Iranian reprisals.
“The issue of the amount of sway the Gulf Arabs have over Pakistan is growing because of Khan and his own vision,” Karasik said. “These Arab states are looking to China to cooperate in Pakistan on a number of issues obviously related to CPEC but also investment in ports. Thus Pakistan finds itself at the nexus of an Arab pull but also a Chinese push.” ■