China Has a Plan to Take Over Central Asia — and America Loves It

An FP special report from the front lines of Beijing's aggressive push into Pakistan and beyond.

• By John Hudson
• September 18, 2015

LAHORE, Pakistan — Moments after landing at Lahore’s international airport one ordinary day in September, crowds of Chinese professionals jockeyed for position in an immigration line that was as long as it was slow. For airport officials in Pakistan’s second-largest city, the sudden influx of Chinese nationals was unremarkable: The same thing is happening in cities and towns across the country.
In the southwestern town of Gwadar, Chinese nationals run a deep-sea port offering direct access to the Indian Ocean. In the Gilgit-Baltistan region near Kashmir, Chinese laborers just finished the restoration of five tunnels on a critical 500-mile highway that connects Pakistan to China. And at a hill town resort near the capital of Islamabad, Chinese diplomats recently dove headfirst into the kind of messy internal politics they’ve long sought to avoid, rolling up their sleeves and taking part in peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Both economically and diplomatically, Pakistan has become the focal point of China’s ambitious plan to expand its influence westward in a policy known as One Belt, One Road. Through the initiative, Beijing has pledged tens of billions of dollars in investments for new roads, pipelines, power stations, rail lines, and ports to create a network of trade routes that link China to South and Central Asia, and then on to Europe. The flagship project is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $46 billion endeavor that will link northwest China to the Pakistani port of Gwadar. http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/18/china-has-a-plan-to-takeover-central-asia-and-america-loves-it/