Forwarded as received
Have you read about #Hambantota port of Sri Lanka? China sold Sri Lanka a plan to develop Hambantota Port during tenure of previous regime of Sri Lanka. China gave them a big loan (did not spend their own money) to Sri Lanka for developing Hambantota. With all their clout in Colombo, Chinese ensured that all the contracts of construction of Hambantota were secured by Chinese companies only. In a way, most of the money came back to China. Now the Hambantota is ready but not able to gather any revenue because it never could have....but Sri Lankans have a big debt which they cannot repay. Now the real game begins. Chinese are negotiating with Sri Lankans that they lease the port to them for forgoing the loan. What will happen now? Chinese will get Hambantota port and 2000 acres of land around it, and they will turn it in to military base. Hambantota is a good site for a military base but not for a maritime port. China gave a loan to Sri Lanka, which Sri Lanka gave to Chinese companies to build a port which will be used as a naval base by China. And China will get Hambantota port plus 2000 acres of land around it for free for 99+99 years. Sri Lanka lost their sovereign land for nothing. This has been called Debt Trap Diplomacy by foreign policy experts.
Don't shoot the messenger just because he is Indian.
I recommend you all read the CPEC Long Term Plan (LTP) document on Dawn's Exclusive on CPEC, and then every Pakistani should ask themselves the following:
1) Why was port of #Gwadar leased out to the Chinese for 43 years for free? If not, how much money did China pay for lease of Gwadar?
2) How much tariff shall China pay for containers passing every year through Pakistan? Or has a lump some amount been decided?
3) Why is Pakistani taxpayer paying more than $11 billion for construction of highways under CPEC scheme when China is going to be a primary beneficiary of those highways? Why cannot China pay at least half of that amount? And why is China charging interest rate that is higher than market rate? Why didn't China give an interest free loan?
4) Why shall China be acquiring large pieces of agricultural land in Pakistan to set up the so called demonstration parks in Pakistan, as mentioned in Dawn's exclusive on CPEC? Won't that acquisition give tough competition to small farmers and eventually make Pakistani farmers landless labourers in Chinese farms on Pakistani farmlands.
5) Coal power projects would produce electricity at a very expensive price. And all the projects are guaranteed by Government of Pakistan. Any loss or inability to buy expensive coal based power shall be of Pakistani taxpayers'. Why is that so?
The CRUX is that Pakistan hasn't negotiated #CPEC in its favour. Slowly, Chinese will be running all the enterprises in Pakistan and they will have an extraordinary clout in determining the policy of various governments in Pakistan.
Earlier, it was America and now it shall be China in future. You guys have changed the client state, not the habit of having a client state.
