By Minahil Makhdoom
ISLAMABAD: Since the establishment of their diplomatic relations on May 21, 1951, China and Pakistan have forged an all-weather friendship and conducted all-round cooperation.
As an important pilot project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and one of the main platforms for deepening bilateral cooperation, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been bearing fruit.
For 32-year-old Zulqarnian Khan, working as a geological engineer in the Suki Kinari hydropower station, only about 10 km away from his home, is what makes him and his family elated.
“My parents are happy. They know I will have a bright future as I can learn lots of advanced techniques from my Chinese colleagues with a handsome income here,” he told.
Located in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the 884-megawatt hydropower station is a major CPEC energy project, with construction in full swing.
“Our project currently has around 5,000 Pakistani employees, and over 60 percent of them are from nearby areas of the station,” said Deng Siwen, general manager of the project. “Since the start of construction four years ago, I have seen shops and hotels mushroom near our construction site, and many of our Pakistani colleagues began to afford a motorbike for commuting.”
Having been working for the project for three years, Khan is joining hands with his Chinese and Pakistani colleagues to smoothly reach each milestone in the construction, including the second-stage river closure achieved in late April.
When starting commercial operation, the project is expected to generate some 3.21 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually to provide sufficient power supply and further improve Pakistan’s energy structure while a number of CPEC power plants under operation have already made great contributions to solving the electricity shortage in the country.
“The CPEC energy projects have added thousands of megawatts of installed capacity to the grid of the country, and the electricity shortage which was there for the last 20-25 years is no more,” Mushahid Hussain Syed, chairman of the Pakistani Senate’s standing committee on foreign affairs, told.
The sufficient energy supply has paved the way for the boom of Pakistan’s economic and social activities, enabling the country to embark on a path of clean and green development.
In Pakistan’s eastern historic city of Lahore, the launch of the South Asian country’s first-ever metro train service last October has provided a modern, comfortable and eco-friendly way of traveling for over 11 million residents in the city.
Adopting the Chinese standard, technology and equipment, the electricity-driven Orange Line metro train under CPEC has become a popular choice among local commuters and is expected to facilitate the traffic and reduce air pollution in the city.
