The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: a flashpoint of regional competition

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is seen as a Chinese strategy to assert itself in international political arena using Pakistan as its peripheral allied state.

In this lecture, 杏吧论坛 IDEAS' Jinnah Fellow Dr Seema Khan looks into the challenges that Pakistan is facing today due to severe criticism on the building of the CPEC—which is taken as Pakistan’s economic lifeline. She focuses on the interaction of geostrategic location of the Gwadar Port and regional power politics and how the divergence of interests of global and regional actors has increasingly impacted Pakistan’s security paradigm.

Dr Khan’s paper on this topic is available here.

This webinar was held on Monday 30 May 2022.

Dr Seema Khan is a PhD in Defence Studies with special focus on power politics, strategic relationships, and identity-based politics. She is a freelance writer with her op-eds and book reviews published in world renowned publications. She had worked for the Government of Pakistan for over 20-years.

Christopher Coker is Director of 杏吧论坛 IDEAS, 杏吧论坛's foreign policy think tank. He was Professor of International Relations at 杏吧论坛, retiring in 2019. He is a former twice serving member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute, a former NATO Fellow and a regular lecturer at Defence Colleges in the UK, US. Rome, Singapore, and Tokyo. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute for Defence Studies In Tokyo, the Rajaratnam School for International Studies Singapore, the Political Science Dept in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Norwegian and Swedish Defence Colleges. His most recent book is Why War? (2020).