On June 21 “China, Pakistan and the Belt and Road Initiative: the Experience of an Early Adopter State” will be published by Routledge. The edited volume by Pascal Abb, Filippo Boni (The Open University) and Hasan H. Karrar (Lahore University of Management Sciences) offers a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on Pakistan's economy, politics and society.
Despite political upheaval in Pakistan, China has invested over 30 billion US dollars in infrastructure there. CPEC is seen as a “flagship” of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and is advertised as a “game changer” for Pakistan. In view of the assumed transformative influence, the international authors of the volume work out the complexity of the CPEC: in their contributions, ranging from agriculture, the environment and gender equality to security, they address both the developmental benefits and the resulting controversies in the conflict-affected country. Using new empirical data on the local impact of CPEC, they challenge prevailing narratives about the BRI as a strategic tool controlled by China to transform other countries along its lines. CPEC, they argue, can rather be understood as an interactive process between China and its international partners that entails interdependent relationships.
On June 27, 14:00 (CET), the participants will present their findings in a virtual book launch moderated by Pascal Abb. Further information on the book can be found on the publisher's website.
Pascal Abb, Senior Researcher at PRIF, focuses on the role of a rising China in a global conflict environment in the internationally cooperating research projects “The Belt and Road Initiative’s impact on conflict states” and “Chinese Adaptation to Conflict Risks in the Era of the Belt and Road Initiative”. In a recent article on our PRIF blog, he analyzed the economic engagement of China and Japan in internationally largely isolated Myanmar.