The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor linking Kashgar in China with Gwadar Port in Pakistan took another step forward last week, with the announcement of preliminary studies into a railway between the two hubs.
The 1,800km-long rail link will run through Islamabad and Karachi, as well as disputed territory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Zhang Cunlin, director of Xinjiang’s Regional Development and Reform Commission, announced this project, which will be enormously expensive considering the mountainous Himalaya terrain the railway must pass over.
There are other latent challenges too, with Pakistani militants conducting brazen attacks against key infrastructure such as airports.
A rail line, which has been in the offing for some time, will add to an earlier deal to improve the existing Karakorum roadway (which will include 200km of tunnels), as well as a proposed pipeline that will allow oil and gas offloaded at Gwadar to be pumped all the way to Xinjiang Province in China.
This USD18 billion corridor, supervised by the Pakistan-China Economic Corridor Secretariat inaugurated last August, will form a major trade gateway between the Middle East/Africa and China.
Chinese infrastructure investment in Pakistan includes Gwadar Port managed by China Overseas Ports Holding since February 2013. An international airport will also be constructed at Gwadar, and a fiber-optic cable will be laid from the Chinese border to Rawalpindi

via Chinese infrastructure spreading its tentacles around India? , AniNews.in.