China’s ‘Safeguards’ Against India & US’s Interests
The Chinese are thinking ahead on Afghanistan and laying the ground for the future, said security expert James Dorsey, as per the FT report. A second tribal leader in Balochistan, who returned from Afghanistan in late August after spending a month there, told FT that ‘China had pledged to build motorways that would link Afghanistan’s main cities’.
Why? Because China and US’s ‘bête noire’ Iran have entered a USD 400 billion ‘military and trade’ deal recently. And unsurprisingly, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and China are becoming closer.
CPEC’s end line is the Gwadar port in Balochistan province in Pakistan, from where its goods will reach the world – and acting on the possibility of India and US choking Chinese ships in the Malacca Strait, China has started to build a railway line – from its Kashgar province into Balochistan.
China wants to connect Gwadar port with the Chabahar port in Iran, from where, ironically, India was asked to move out, and the recent visit of India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Tehran also turned out to be a damp squib. The Gwadar port is what Israel wants to keep an eye on, as Israel-UAE have decided to make an intelligence base on Socotra island in Yemen, which overlooks the Gwadar. This, after Israel and UAE decided to enter diplomatic relations on 14 August 2020.