EVENTS

Abstract

On 22 May 2013, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari agreed to build an economic corridor between the two countries.  Since then, China has granted $11 billion concessionary grant, $757 million interest-free loans and $500 million grant (mainly for the development of the strategically important Gwadar port) to Pakistan. Gwadar is one of the rare ports which China can use in South Asia.   China has therefore  provided interest-free loans as  grants, = to Pakistan to let Gwadar usable for China for logistic purpose. China has also helped Pakistan in maintenance works in 1300 km Karakoram Highway (KKH) from Kashgar, Xinjiang, China to Islamabad, Pakistan. The presenter recently travelled on the KKH all the way from China to Pakistan.  Through his observation along the route, the presenter observes that the dream of connecting China to Arabic Sea through CPEC lacks cost-effectiveness.  The author is of the impression that Pakistan lets China invest on what it needs for infrastructure building in the name of CPEC as other financial resources like the Asia Development Bank does not fully cater to the needs of infrastructure building in Pakistan. In the presentation, the speaker is going to show the result of the field work he had conducted both in China and Pakistan and present provisional evaluation of CPEC projects.

About the Speaker

Dr. Mimura is a Senior Research Fellow, Research Division at ERINA, Niigata, Japan. His research focuses on the economy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK); economic related laws and foreign direct investment related laws of the DPRK; economic cooperation between DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK). He has been associated with ERINA since 2001. Since 2013, he has also been a Visiting Professor at the Northeast Asian Studies College at Jilin University, Changchun, China. Dr. Mimura has a PhD in Jurisprudence from Osaka University in Japan as well as from the DPRK.