So, the once sleepy fishing village of Gwadar in South Baluchistan is to become the 21st century Hong Kong. It may take rather longer than the term of the present Pakistani government (or even the whole century) to fulfill that dream. With Hong Kong, it took the British 99 years.
Imperial Britain, as landlords with an unfettered lease on that toe-hold on China’s mainland, had a century in which to turn it into the envy of the commercial world. When the British handed back Hong Kong to China in 1997, it surrendered an affluent, densely populated, urban sprawl of modern high-rises.
The British were convinced that after they left, the People’s Republic of China would destroy Hong Kong’s unique, gilded identity and reduce it to a drab and dull socialist uniformity. Instead, with a mandarin’s subtlety, it evolved the “one nation, two systems” solution. Hong Kong’s capitalism and freedoms would be allowed to co-exist with the mainland’s brand of socialism. And it has. Its population has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, the highest IQ amongst eighty one countries, and the longest life expectancy.
Ironically, by developing Gwadar, the Chinese are reprising the role played by the British in developing Hong Kong. Over the past decade, the Chinese government has invested heavily in Gwadar and provided substantial financing towards the $250m cost of a deep-sea port. Earlier this year, its state-owned China Overseas Port Holdings Limited assumed responsibility for the port’s operations.
More recently, in July, a number of memoranda were signed between the Pakistani government and its Chinese counterpart, committing themselves to invest up to $750m to make Gwadar a fully-fledged commercial entrepot. Gwadar is to become the southern tip of a long noodle, an “economic corridor” that will extend 1300 kilometres, connecting Gwadar with the Karakoram Highway at Khunjerab in northern Pakistan, and then on to Kashgar in north-western China.
The kinship between Hong Kong and Gwadar is more than cosmetic. Hong Kong roughly translated stands for “fragrant harbour;” Gwadar is a prosaic composite of two Balochi words – gwat meaning air and dar a door. For almost a century, possession of Gwadar oscillated between the local Balochis and foreign Omanis living on the other side of the Arabian Sea. In September 1958, the Pakistan Government purchased Gwadar from the Sultan of Oman, applying a gift of $3m provided by Prince Karim (the present Aga Khan).
In September 1973, forty years ago, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (then Prime Minister) offered Gwadar to US President Richard Nixon as a facility for the US navy. In a briefing paper prepared for Nixon, Dr Henry Kissinger, (then still Nixon’s National Security Advisor), defined the US position:
“We do not have a great interest in having a naval facility in Balochistan; this would probably cost some hundreds of millions of dollars, and the political impact of the project will depend in part on its not being a white elephant.’’
Kissinger argued that if a port had to be constructed to alleviate the pressure on Karachi, it would be more feasible for it to be located on the eastern Sindhi side of Karachi than on its western Balochi flank. Kissinger advised Nixon that Bhutto’s “main reason for seeking this port probably is to create a major new and a highly visible economic asset for the people of Baluchistan province.”
He continued: “Baluchistan is Pakistan’s poorest region, and it is dominated by tribal groups which generally oppose the Bhutto government and want provincial autonomy. These groups engage sporadically in clashes with government forces and pose a perennial headache for Pakistani governments.’’
At that time, Hong Kong’s solution of “one nation, two systems” was still two decades away, and Gwadar remained beset by its own predicament of “one state, two nations.”
Interestingly, in November 1973, Kissinger told Chairman Mao Zedong when he met him in Beijing: “Our difficulty of operating in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea has been that we do not have a base in that area. But we have now developed an island called Diego Garcia as a base, and we have also discussed with Pakistan the possibility of building a port.”
Chairman Mao suspected that the word “possibility’”was a foreign euphemism for “improbability.” His successors are not as easily daunted as Kissinger. They have decided to have a presence in the Indian Ocean – whatever the cost. Rather like the Soviets in the 1950’s who supported Castro’s Cuba for similar strategic reasons, the Chinese government has taken its decision for reasons outside the box of conventional politico-economics.
They have without blinking, quantified the costs and committed to provide all the resources necessary – money, materiel and manpower – to make Gwadar a functioning reality. They have calculated the risks and are clear what dividends to expect. One wonders whether anyone in Pakistan had done a parallel analysis. In fact, one wonders whether anyone here had considered leasing Gwadar to the Chinese government and then, after 99 years of its development, asking for its return.