ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding a shared colonial legacy, the newly created states in South Asia have traversed along substantively different paths in terms of state building, nationhood, and developmental programmes. The commonality among them lies in the fact that each state is contending with the challenge of economic development with a view to addressing myriad socio-economic problems. However, the approach adopted by each South Asian state towards achieving development has been different, dependent as they have been on their unique identities and circumstances. Moreover, due to deep-rooted discords and unfavourable geopolitical and geo-economic dynamics, productive and coherent regional collaboration has failed to materialise. Perhaps the biggest casualty of the inter-state and intra-state conflicts in South Asia has been connectivity or the lack of it. Pakistan, situated powerfully as it is in the geopolitical sense has sought to capitalise the same by entering into compacts with external great powers, the impact of which has almost always spilled over into its domestic political arena and socio-economic fabric. Pakistan has enjoyed a particularly steady alliance with China, a cooperation which has gained momentum in recent times. With China asserting itself in the global scenario, the penetration into Pakistan has been remarkable. As an integral part of its Belt and Road Initiative, the relationship between the two states has gone beyond the rhetorical to the substantive with geopolitical, geo-economic and geocultural dimensions and implications thereof. This chapter begins with a reading of the process of decolonisation in South Asia, the nature of state building and regionalism or the lack of it in the expanse, providing opportunity spaces for China's entry into the region as a major investor and actor. This is followed by an analysis of China's association with South Asia, culminating in the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative that constitutes the backdrop to the deconstruction of its critical partnership in the region with its “all-weather” ally, Pakistan. The subsequent section briefly traces the resilient and intensifying China-Pakistan story. This is followed by a brief explication of the critical site of China's penetrative gaze in South Asia, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The paper concludes with a reading of the Belt and Road diplomacy, in particular the CPEC diplomacy via the lens of connectivity, capital and culture; in other words, it offers an analysis of the Pakistan-China dynamics through the prism of the intersectionality of politics with economics and culture with its ramifications for the region at large.
