Mario Nawfal@MarioNawfal
🇵🇰🇨🇳 Pakistan just quietly walked away from its most important relationship.
For years the China-Pakistan relationship was untouchable. Officials in Islamabad described it in language they used for nobody else, "all weather," "deeper than the deepest sea." The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor pumped tens of billions into Pakistani highways, power plants and ports at a time when the country couldn't attract foreign investment from anyone else. It was the one constant in a foreign policy that changed with every government.
Then Munir took over and it just... stopped.
Of the 90 CPEC projects originally planned, only 38 have been completed. Twenty three are still under construction. A third never even broke ground. The last major project delivered was in 2022. Nothing significant has been added to the pipeline since. ML-1, the flagship upgrade of Pakistan's main north-south railway that was supposed to be the centerpiece of CPEC's entire second phase, has been deferred so many times it's become a running joke.
Sharif flew to Beijing in 2024 specifically to secure new funding. He came back with nothing. Pakistan's unpaid dues to Chinese power producers had ballooned into open friction. China's own ambassador in Islamabad took the extraordinary step of publicly accusing the Pakistani state of failing to protect Chinese workers, 21 of whom had been killed in attacks since CPEC launched.
Behind the scenes it was even uglier. Pakistan had privately offered China what Beijing had wanted for over a decade, a permanent military base at the deep water port of Gwadar. But Pakistan came to that table with a list of demands. Protect us from U.S. retaliation for hosting the base. Modernize our military. And most critically, give us a sea-based nuclear second strike capability, the most sensitive element of any nuclear arsenal, something Pakistan had been trying to develop on its own for twenty years.
China walked away. Beijing concluded the nuclear demand alone would make it directly complicit in nuclear proliferation in South Asia, exposing China to international consequences that made the Gwadar base not worth it. The talks ended bitterly.
Munir told a journalist in August 2025, "We will not sacrifice one friend for the other." He had already made his choice long before saying it.
Washington got exactly what it wanted. CPEC's second phase is dead. The Gwadar base never happened. And the relationship Pakistan once called deeper than the deepest sea is sitting at the bottom of it.
Source: Drop Site News
