By Kim Sengupta
From the article:
An international conference took place last week in Gwadar, a dusty Pakistani town perched on the edge of the Indian Ocean – an unlikely place, one would have thought, for Imran Khan’s government to invite dignitaries from 26 countries. But the real aim was to display a vision of the future – a mighty port city and commercial centre for the region which would put Dubai and Bahrain in the shade.
Not everything went according to plan. While the delegates were being shown around the site of this projected mega city, gunmen on motorcycles shot dead three workers and injured five others constructing homes in the suburbs for future residents. It was the fourth fatal shooting in the area in recent months; more than three dozen builders had died in a series of attacks, with the Baloch Liberation Front, a group seeking an independent Balochistan, being held responsible.
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It has now been almost a decade since China overtook the US as Africa’s biggest trading partner. Nine countries have signed Belt and Road agreements with Beijing and 20 others are engaged in talks to do so. The Chinese government pledged $60bn in preferential loans and investments at an economic forum for Africa three years ago.
African countries, so far, have been readily receptive to the Chinese loans which have been pouring in. But concerns have been raised too, with the Centre for Global Development finding, for instance, that Djibouti, where the Chinese now have a military base, has seen its foreign debt swell from 50 per cent to 85 per cent of GDP with the largest amount by far owed to China. The Chinese company CMPort, the same one which built Hambantota in Sri Lanka, now under Chinese control, is building a port in the country at Doraleh.
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