By Ankit Panda
April 18, 2015
http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/an-all-weather-encounter-chinas-xi-jinping-heads-to-pakistan/
Chinese President Xi Jinping will head to Pakistan next week. What’s on the agenda?
After plenty of ambiguity, we’ve now heard confirmation from both Islamabad and Beijing that Chinese President Xi Jinping will indeed be traveling to Pakistan next week for a long-awaited state visit. The visit was originally supposed to take place last fall, when Xi toured South Asia (visiting India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives), but was postponed amid nationwide anti-government protests in Pakistan. Xi’s visit to Pakistan will last two days and then he will head to Indonesia to attend the Asian-African Summit and commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference.
The agenda for Xi’s meetings with Pakistan’s top leadership — including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, President Mamnoon Hussain, and possibly Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif (no relation to the prime minister) — will be packed. What we know about the impending visit’s agenda primarily comes from the Pakistani side — the Chinese foreign ministry and state media have been relatively muted about the visit, only officially announcing it on Friday. Pakistan, meanwhile, has spread word that the crown jewel of Xi’s visit to Pakistan this year will be a series of agreements on financing Pakistani infrastructure projects, in energy, transportation, and communications. Pakistani officials estimate that China will commit $46 billion to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (the name for this collection of projects). China’s former ambassador to Pakistan recently corroborated these reports to Xinhua, noting that ”the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will be high on the agenda” during Xi’s visit.
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