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The opening of Gwadar International Airport, a key piece of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is expected to bolster the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), while also intensifying India’s concerns over Beijing’s potential military presence in the region, analysts said.
The US$230 million state-of-the-art airport, which spans 430 acres in southwestern Pakistan, is central to China’s US$65 billion CPEC project to develop Gwadar into a pivotal trade and transport hub.
Inaugurated in October by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, the airport began commercial operations on January 20, signalling significant regional economic and strategic development.
Antoine Levesques, a research fellow for South and Central Asian Defence, Strategy and Diplomacy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said that while India does not seek Pakistan’s economic decline, the regional rival has deep-seated misgivings about CPEC.
There is a possibility China and Pakistan may choose to secure Gwadar as a Chinese base in the northwestern Indian Ocean during peacetime, Levesques said, “with the potential for shades of militarisation for ‘hybrid’ or even overt high-intensity warfare.”
As part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, Pakistan is also developing a deep water port near the new airport in a joint venture with Oman and China. Oman has shown interest in building a US$2.3 billion railway project between Gwadar and Jacobabad.
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