The Chinese government on Monday, rubbished the allegations of a Pakistani army General that, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), the Intelligence agency of India is sabotaging the almost imperialistic China Pakistan Economic corridor (CPEC) project.
This dismissal by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang comes after a 14th November claim by Chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Zubair Mehmood Hayat, wherein he alleged that India was stoking chaos and anarchy in the region.
As per the General, RAW at the cost of $500 million had established a special cell to sabotage the CPEC. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson though rebuffed such claims by stating that they had no such relevant reports.
Such an open contradiction by China which is dubbed as an all weather friend of Pakistan, is interesting to say the least considering other peculiar reports too are surfacing regarding Pak-China relations in the CPEC.
As per a Swarajya report, Pakistan has decided to cancel a US$14 billion infrastructure agreement with China, which would have been used to construct a dam in the Gilgit-Baltistan, under the CPEC framework.
The reason given by Pakistan for such a refusal is that Beijing imposed strict conditions for funding the project which were not doable and against Pakistan’s interests. A few of these conditions include having a Chinese company as the owner, operator and maintenance provider for the project.
It remains to be seen if further fault lines appear in between the two countries in the coming days.
Incidentally this isn’t the only time China has issued an India related clarification because of Pakistan. We had reported how Dunya News, a TV news channel of Pakistan had made a sensational claim which suggested that the Doklam standoff between India and China had blown up into a full-scale war, resulting in the deaths of 158 Indian soldiers.
India soon clarified that the report was utterly baseless, malicious and mischievous. Later Chinese newspapers like People’s Daily (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China) and Global Times, another state run media outlet too denounced the Pakistani media reports and termed them as ‘fake news’.
