For locals, a China-funded port in Pakistan brings fears of being erased

Funded and operated by China, Pakistan’s port at Gwadar has been touted as a competitor to regional ports like Dubai in the UAE and Chabahar Port in Iran. But what started off as a small fishing town has now transformed into a securitized and segregated harbor settlement, whose economic benefits are not enjoyed by the local population. 

Back in 2015, Chinese President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 and Pakistan’s then prime minister Nawaz Sharif unveiled plans to expand the development of a deep-water port at the small town of Gwadar. The project is a key part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which was originally proposed to involve $87 billion of investment from Beijing, and is a major part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

It’s not Shenzhen, despite the hype 

Gwadar Port was declared “fully operational” in 2021, but it’s unclear how much cargo it is currently handling. You can find various facts about the port on its website; Chinese state media modestly said in July this year that “at present, the terminal can accommodate two 50,000-ton cargo ships at the same time.” In 2021, a reporter from the nonprofit website Third Pole, which covers water and environmental issues in the Himalayan watershed area, said that the only activity at the port was by a couple of crabs climbing on the dock, while the “towering blue and red cranes, brought there to load and unload shipping containers, were still.”

The Chinese government has hyped the port development as being “inspired by…Shenzhen,” and Pakistani officials have echoed that phrasing. And indeed, although Gwadar was once a remote fishing village — like Shenzhen was until the early 1980s — it now boasts a coal-fired power plant and a vocational training institute, with a hospital and an airport slated to open within the next few months, all funded by China. Both Pakistani and Chinese governments tout the development’s huge potential to lead regional economic growth. 

But “the vision to build a world-class port is well described but makes little sense in isolation from broader economic development in the hinterland of the port,” Peter Borup, former CEO of Norvic Shipping International, told The China Project. 

“The port is currently only deep enough for very standard imports of coal, fertilizers, and grains,” he added. And while the next phase in the planned development of Gwadar Port is to dredge to achieve a draft of approximately 20 meters (65 feet), enough for the largest container ships, compared with its current depth of about 14 meters (46 feet), Borup said that “Pakistan’s economy is nowhere near to having an economy that warrants such big ships.”

Gwadar Port offers Beijing the chance to build an energy and transport corridor straight to China from the Indian Ocean and the oil- and gas-rich region of the Strait of Hormuz. Gwadar is the closest possible port location to Iran and Saudi Arabia on Pakistan territory. It looks like an ideal place for Beijing to extend a Belt and Road spoke directly from China to the Indian Ocean. 

But here’s where the problem starts: Gwadar is in the southern part of Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, which is resource rich but whose more than 12 million people have a per capita GDP of under $1,000, in the same range as Chad and Afghanistan.

A segregated port settlement

While Gwadar Port has been in development with Chinese funding for more than seven years, many locals do not see any benefits to their own lives, or improvements in basic infrastructure outside of the fenced-off port. 

“This generation of youth in Gwadar grew up over the past 20 years with a dream that Chinese money would transform Gwadar into a new Dubai or Singapore, but what they see today is enough to shatter their hope,” 50-year-old Nasir Rahim Suhrabi, a social activist in Gwadar, told The China Project.

“The whole city has been converted into a security zone. Locals face restrictions and security checks to move across the port city. The mini fish harbor has become a part of Gwadar Port, where local fishermen no longer enjoy free access to the harbor, since they have to pass through security protocols,” he added.

Koh-i-Batil, a hilly area just south of Gwadar Port, used to draw crowds for its sea views. “It used to be a place for entertainment for local visitors before construction began. Now they cannot enter the area without passing through various security checkpoints,” Suhrabi said. 

Political activists also claim that the way that the port city is being developed puts locals at a disadvantage.

“I would say the problems have worsened with the development of Gwadar Port over the past two decades,” Kalsoom Baloch, another activist in Gwadar, told The China Project. Baloch previously participated in protests demanding rights for local residents in Gwadar. 

“The locals are anxious,” she said, and explained: 

Many of them depend on fishing to earn their livelihoods. Now their access to the sea has become more difficult due to certain security protocols set by Pakistani authorities. Locals do not generally meet the eligibility criteria, such as higher education, vast experience, and relevant skills, required for the key jobs in the Gwadar project. They are not against development, but they want their due representation in the process.

In interviews with The China Project, other Gwadar locals have expressed fears that they will become an underrepresented minority if the port development really takes off. 

Promises to develop local infrastructure have not been kept

An earlier plan for Gwadar involved relocating local residents to a newly built community somewhere away from the port, which is a model often used by the Chinese government when creating large infrastructure projects within China. But Naseer Khan Kashani, who served as the chairman of Gwadar Port Authority (GPA) until September of this year, told The China Project that authorities have dropped the idea. Other promises have taken its place. 

“As per the Gwadar Master Plan approved in 2019, there will be no shifting of local population from the old town. We will modernize the old town…And we have plans to develop infrastructure, improve the electricity and water supply, and other civic systems to facilitate the locals,” Kashani said.

Kashani added that locals’ fears about “becoming a minority” are “merely apprehension” due to an influx of foreigners. “This is not true,” he said. “If we just look at the arrival of non-locals and Chinese in Gwadar over the past five years, it nominally increased the Gwadar population, which is estimated at 150,000. Locals are still a majority.”

Local analysts, however, aren’t convinced that their reservations about China-funded development are unfounded. 

“Why were the people of Gwadar not consulted when Pakistani authorities planned the development of the port? This shows that decision makers in Islamabad have no interest in addressing the legitimate concerns of local people,” Jan Muhammed Baloch, a political analyst, told The China Project.

The local population currently gets little benefit from social welfare projects. The reality is that all the China-funded projects in the social sector are part of a larger plan to accommodate the new population, investors, and military division, according to Jan Baloch. He says that while there are some grandiose development schemes that could change the infrastructure and lifestyle in the port city, they will leave no place for locals, nor address their needs and concerns.  

“Even after 20 years, local problems such as power outages, water supplies, poor sanitation, sewage systems, and joblessness are still unresolved,” Asif Baloch, the editor of Daily Azadi, an Urdu-language newspaper in Balochistan, told The China Project. “Locals are still fighting, and will continue to fight for their legitimate rights.”

Dr. Manzoor Baloch, a professor and researcher on Balochistan affairs from the University of Balochistan, urged authorities in Islamabad to prioritize jobs to locals under the new development schemes.

“Chinese stakes in Balochistan have increased over the last two decades, whether in Gwadar or in Saindak, where they operate a gold mine. If they don’t bring locals on board, the ongoing development process will continue to be threatened by Baloch militants who have recently increased attacks on Chinese nationals,” Baloch told The China Project.

The development of the port has also ignited anger from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a local separatist group labeled as a terrorist organization by Pakistani authorities, which resents China’s growing economic footprint in the region. An increasing number of attacks on Chinese nationals — including a failed suicide bombing in May — has driven Islamabad to ramp up security in the region, frustrating local residents.

The Gwadar residents with whom The China Project spoke about the port development are not militants. But if their concerns continue to be ignored in Beijing and in Islamabad, Gwadar is unlikely to have a peaceful or prosperous future. While a lot of Chinese money has been spent on the construction of high-rise buildings, luxurious offices, asphalt roads, and a green belt inside the port, the local population living in the town is still beleaguered by basic problems, such as outdated sanitation systems, broken roads, and the lack of clean drinking water and decent housing.

Ultimately, military force will not provide real security to Chinese-funded projects in Gwadar and Balochistan as a whole without active local participation in the planning and development of the port city.