ISLAMABAD: Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing has termed Pakistan as China’s “most important partner” and said that “CPEC has a pivotal position in China’s foreign policy.”
He made these remarks during an in-camera meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on CPEC, which was convened on Monday with the chairmanship of Senator Mushahid Hussain. The ambassador said that China and Pakistan would protect their “common interests together”, with CPEC gaining “more significant and greater attention in the region as it is also a project for regional cooperation and connectivity”.
Introducing Ambassador Yao Jing as “an old friend of Pakistan” who knows the region like the “palm of his hand”, Senator Mushahid Hussain said that Jing had served in Islamabad, Kabul and New Delhi and “we are fortunate that now he is posted as Ambassador in Islamabad at a time of tremendous transformation.”
Ambassador Jing said that among the priorities of China’s foreign policy viz–a-viz CPEC are to keep funding CPEC so that it can move forward. He pressed on “making CPEC more sustainable, meeting the satisfaction level of both sides, making CPEC more understandable for the media with transparency and access to information, establish a framework to build Special Economic Zones (SEZs) through joint ventures with the private sector as well as investors from other countries and promote regional cooperation and broaden CPEC to include Afghanistan and Central Asia.”
The Committee welcomed these initiatives and Ambassador Yao Jing thanked the Parliamentary Committee for playing a key role in promoting consensus among provinces, political parties and parliament on CPEC.
All the members of the Parliamentary Committee representing different parties and provinces said that they were “100% supportive of CPEC.” Secretary Planning Shoaib Siddiqui also briefed the Parliamentary Committee about the recent visit of a high-level delegation which he led from the Pakistani side to take forward the decisions of the last JCC meeting held in November 2017, including focus on such areas as building the Western route of the CPEC, the Karachi Circular Railway and Main Line-I of the Pakistan Railway.
The meeting lasted for over two and a half hours with a productive interaction of the members with the Chinese ambassador. The meeting was attended by Lt Gen (R) Abdul Qadir Baloch, Minister for States and Frontier Regions, Isphanyar M Bhandara, Sheikh Salahuddin, Alhaj Shahji Gul Afridi, Senator Sardar Fateh Muhammad Muhammad Hassani and secretary committee and senior officers of the different ministries.
