Some media reports allege ‘Pakistan is building a city for half a million Chinese nationals at a cost of US$150 million in port city of Gwadar. Only Chinese citizens will live in this gated zone, a China’s colony within Pakistan’. They surmise ‘CPEC could turn into another East India Company’.
Wherever the Chinese go, they prefer to set up and live in China towns, even in the USA. Their lifestyle and notion of ‘halal (religiously valid food and drinks) is different from Muslim, Christian and Jewish (kosher). Not long ago (April 4, 2018), Chinese engineers scuffled with police when it prevented them to go to red-light area in Khanewal (Punjab). Affluent foreigners and overseas Chinese are accustomed to enjoying Karaoke clubs in China. ‘In 2001, a count of the out-of-wedlock children produced by Shenzhen’s working women and mistresses over two decades numbered 5,20,000 (Ted C. Fishman, China, Inc., p. 98).
China has time and again assured that she ‘was not seeking to bide time so as to gain hegemony’ (Alvin Y. So& Yin Wah, The global rise of China. 2016. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. p.214). The writer point out ‘China did not intend to dominate Asia or to displace the United States as the world’s preeminent power’. ‘Even as there was an apparent increase in military tensions between China and Japan over Diaoy/Senkaku Islands after September 2012, the Chinese administration as well as the Chinese Liberation Army remained adamant on the country’s commitment to peace and harmony. Chinese Liberation Army made it very clear that China’s main objective is economic growth, not war’. ‘Regardless of Germany’s real purposes, once Germany succeeded in building a powerful navy, this would present an objective threat to Britain…formal assurance from Germany was hardly sufficient to dispel the suspicions’ (ibid., p. 215). Henry Kissinger (On China, 2011, New York: Penguin) says ‘China would push American power as far away as it could, circumscribing the scope of American naval power and reduce America’s weight in international diplomacy’.
MOHAMMAD ASAD MALIK,
Rawalpindi, December 22.