148

China Report 56, 1 (2020): 139–159

The context and timing of a thorough discussion on the subject of India’s east-
ward engagement is, therefore, absolutely critical. This book is, thus, a very useful
and important contribution to the literature on the subject which is assuming greater
urgency and higher priority in India’s foreign policy calculus with each passing day.

Sudhir T. Devare
Former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, India;
Former Director General, Indian Council of World Affairs, India
stdevare@gmail.com

Siegfried O. Wolf, The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor of the Belt and Road
Initiative: Concept, Context and Assessment. (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019), pp. 395,
£79.49, ISBN: 978-3030161972.

DOI: 10.1177/0009445519895600

Since its official launch in 2015, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has
been absorbed into China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a ‘flagship project’ or
‘pilot project’. Labelling CPEC like this suggests that the Chinese government views
the success of the project as a key to the progress of the BRI. Observers, therefore,
need to acquire a clear understanding of the impacts, feasibility and consequences of
this joint Sino-Pakistani project, both to the extent that it has been realised so far and
also in terms of its medium- and long-term goals. Thus, it is surprising that persuasive,
rigorous scholarly analysis of CPEC is thin on the ground.
This situation probably exists because most of the Pakistani and Chinese
researchers who would be best placed to critically interrogate the project are pres-
sured to toe the official line rather than critique it. In Pakistan, where the military
supports CPEC and has long exerted extraordinary influence over government, it
is difficult for a scholar to raise their head above the parapet and point out flaws in
the application of the project. The Scholars at Risk Network has pointed out that
‘Pakistan’s higher education sector faces significant violent and legislative pressures’
(SARN, 2017), both from the state and terrorist networks. Scholars have frequently
been killed or imprisoned. Even since the election of Prime Minister Imran Khan,
critics of the state policy are obliged to self-censor or face the loss of funding. Due
to such an oppressive atmosphere, it behoves scholars based outside Pakistan and
China to dig down beneath the surface of CPEC in order to unearth its impacts.
There is a pressing need for such research because most publications, even those in
peer-reviewed journals, tend to eulogise the project and assume uncritically that it
will unfold according to official pronouncements.
Siegfried O. Wolf ’s book The China-Pakistan Corridor of the Belt and Road Initiative:
Concept, Context and Assessment is a valiant attempt to delve into every aspect of CPEC.
Dr Wolf, the Director of Research at the South Asia Democratic Forum, in Brussels,
 Book Reviews 149

has managed to obtain and analyse an impressively comprehensive set of empirical

data concerning the implementation of the project in Pakistan; yet, the book, running
to well over 300 pages, is not without flaws.
The book is at its best when it is analysing the minutiae of CPEC, especially relat-
ing to the Pakistani domestic context. For instance, Wolf forensically dissects the role
of the Chinese state-owned company Sinosure in CPEC energy and infrastructure
investments. His research reveals that Pakistanis are charged an insurance fee for ‘debt
servicing’ (p. 188, note 99) of 7 per cent on energy and infrastructure projects as a
condition of receiving loans from Chinese state banks. A concealed tax is, thus, added
to what are frequently called ‘concessionary’, low-interest loans, adding to the debt
burden on the Pakistani state. The costs are also passed on to Pakistani consumers
in high energy charges. With such strings attached to the Chinese loan funding for
infrastructure, which is inevitably constructed by Chinese state-owned enterprises, the
financing of CPEC begins to look like a coordinated attempt by the Chinese state to
maximise the chances of recovering its investment capital and to increase its influence
over Pakistan’s internal affairs.
Wolf also traces in intricate detail the role of the Pakistani military in CPEC. The
military in Pakistan is influential in both government and business, stretching the
concept of a military-industrial complex to an extreme. Wolf is very adept in explaining
how the interests of Pakistani military elites are closely connected to CPEC. He dem-
onstrates that the project benefits the core of the country—chiefly in Punjab—rather
than its dispossessed periphery. He also draws the conclusion that it suits the Chinese
to do business with Pakistan’s military in order to further their own geopolitical and
security goals in the region. These include containing Uighur separatism in Xinjiang
province to the north of the border.
The problems with the book relate mainly to its framing and organisation. The
book begins with a discussion of the concept of ‘economic corridors’, which, as Wolf
correctly points out, is much needed given the lacuna in the literature. However, Wolf ’s
chapter-length treatment is not so much clarificatory as confusing. For example, the
chapter ends with a two-page table representing what Wolf views as key indicators and
characteristics of economic corridors, but without a concise definition which would
enable the reader to carry forward a clear sense of the concept into the remainder of the
volume. This diffuseness in the conceptual framing then bleeds over into the remainder
of the book, which suffers—especially in Chapter 6, which is over one hundred pages
long—from a profusion of headings and sub-headings, which serve only to bewilder
the reader even more. Some judicious editing and pruning of the text would surely
have helped to shape it into a more digestible form.
This reader also wishes that the author had devoted more space to geopolitics and
the problematic transport connection across the China–Pakistan border (see Garlick
2018). These issues are covered, but the latter gets only a few pages, while the former
is mostly analysed in the concluding chapter. Ideally, the author would have focussed
more on the geopolitics and geo-economics of the project in the early part of the book

China Report 56, 1 (2020): 139–159

150 China Report 56, 1 (2020): 139–159

instead of focussing so heavily (and opaquely) on the ‘economic corridor’ concept;

the incisiveness of the final chapter is in marked contrast to the lack of clear framing
in the early chapters.
Yet, as already stated, if the reader makes the effort to plough on through the mid-
dle and later chapters, there are many revelatory insights. Among these is the analysis
in Chapter 7 of the European Union’s (EU’s) granting of GSP+ status to Pakistan
and the risks that CPEC’s lack of transparency and environmental awareness poses to
that status. One implication is that China aims to exploit Pakistan’s ability to export
goods to the EU with low or no tariffs by relabelling Chinese products as ‘Made in
Pakistan’. Startling insights, such as these, make a close study of the text worthwhile.
Overall, given the relative lack of quality literature on CPEC so far, Dr Wolf ’s book
is an essential resource for observers of China–Pakistan relations and the implementa-
tion of the BRI. Despite flaws, the book leans heavily on the author’s rich fieldwork in
Pakistan and presents deep analytical insights regarding the situation on the ground.
The volume, thus, should be viewed as a ground-breaking attempt to understand the
impact of CPEC on the present and future development of Pakistan.

References

Garlick, Jeremy. 2018. ‘Deconstructing the China-Pakistan economic corridor: Pipe dreams versus
geopolitical realities’. Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 27, No. 112, 519–533.
Scholars at Risk Network (SARN). 2017. Pakistan’s higher education sector faces significant violent and
legislative pressures. New York, NY: New York University. https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/2017/04/
pakistans-higher-education-sector-faces-significant-violent-pressures/

Jeremy Garlick
Jan Masaryk Centre of International Studies
Faculty of International Relations
University of Economics Prague, Czech Republic
jeremygarlick@yahoo.co.uk

James Farrer, International Migrants in China’s Global City: The New Shanghailanders
(New York: Routledge, 2019) pp. 216, $122.15, ISBN: 9780815382638.

DOI: 10.1177/0009445519895611

Since when life and commerce gathered pace in the Foreign Settlement divisions during
the late-nineteenth century, Shanghai has always been a dazzled destination for western
traders, journeymen and fortune hunters. As this, once swamp filled wetland along
the Huangpu river, transformed into a modern city, an incessant stream of western
migrants, both transitory and permanent, arrived in search of a new life in the East.