Geo-economic reforms - China is a hope.

Byline: Nazir Ahmed Shaikh

The current year as well as the preceding years has seen a series of crisis that will mark the modern history. The efforts from states to shed-off the worst effects of COVID-19 in global financial markets, warning heightened conflict between states, is waged by proxy through the override of commercial contracts by national security law, in the contentious allocation of EU recovery funds, and the China policy for Joe Biden administration. These developments has highlighted the importance of role and extent of new and old geopolitical tensions.

Different from classical geopolitical disputes, these conflicts are taking place in a highly inter-dependent world economy. Different terms are being used like "new geopolitics or "geo-economics", etc. to capture this progression from classical international disputes to globalized and networked ways of coercing others and enforcing state interests. The shift from geopolitics to geo-economics is relatively a new phenomenon that urges us to deliberate beyond the classical geopolitical conception of global power politics.

Traditionally, the concept of indorsing and protecting national interests through economic interdependence and alliance with like-minded states is not a new thing for Pakistan. The structural changes due to this shift from geopolitics to geo-economics have left no country unaffected; so Pakistan is no exception.

The structural injunctions of bipolar order during the Cold War could not break the resolve of Pakistan to connect the world through the common market and cultural bonds. The formation of Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) in 1964 exhibited Pakistan's idea of development and socio-economic interdependence among Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. RCD provided a platform to forward many infrastructure building projects of road and rail connectivity. RCD became stagnant because of the domestic political and economic turmoil in member states but the expansion of RCD in 1991 enabled broader regional cooperation under the new name Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).

Those countries who are willing to quit the conventional security model and desired to reshape their chronicle of security and development, from them the rise of China has changed the situation in their favour. The revival of the historic Silk Road route through China's BRI initiative has provided a new hope of inclusive growth and development for all. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)...