Chapter 11 Pakistan’s Role in the New Silk Route: Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – the modern equivalent of the historic Silk Route – will connect China to multiple countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe through a complex web of land and sea routes. As a pilot project of a network of this magnitude, the 62 billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has far-reaching implications for future bilateral agreements with other countries along the routes, and for geopolitics in the region. This chapter will analyze CPEC along the following key strands of inquiry: Pakistan’s internal political economy, her macroeconomic stability, and an analysis of the corridor’s long-term impact. While the literature on corridors is extensive, it does not give us a unifying theory with which to gauge the effectiveness of CPEC, which is more than an economic endeavor. In order to truly understand the dynamics of the region, the authors examine the extent to which domestic support for the CPEC may impact the whole initiative, and how the deficiencies in local infrastructure may take away from its success.