ISLAMABAD: Ms. Sun Haiyan, Vice Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee on Thursday said that the governments of China and Pakistan have agreed to develop CPEC 2.0 with a high-degree development.
Addressing the participants of the thematic briefing on the Fourth Plenary Session of 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China here, the minister said that China and Pakistan are celebrating the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations and her visit was aimed at further cementing the bilateral relations between the two countries.
“We also want to brief Pakistani audience about the decisions taken at the Fourth Plenary Session of 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. During this visit, I also met with PM Shehbaz Sharif, DPM Ishaq Dar, among others. We discussed a lot of things to further the brotherhood and friendship,” she said.
She said that duirng the past five years, China faced challenges of covid and then high tariffs from the US. However, she said that China’s GDP growth remained 5.4 in past five years.
She said that the per capita income of Chinese citizens grew significantly during the past five years and China also made good progress in terms of alternative energy.
“Despite challenges, we did pretty well in the past five years. The income gap shrunk, and we worked on welfare of our people. For next five years plan, we carefully evaluated the challenges and hope for better results,” she said.
The IDCPC vice minister said the China is focusing on technology development and we want to further technology-driven development in next five years.
“We also try to further develop innovative and green industry. We plan to further invest in providing equal opportunities to our people to help bridge the income gap between our people. We are also focusing on green and human development,” she said.
Ms Sun Haiyan said that China will give priority to our neighboring countries in our pursuit of shared development and Pakistan is our number one priority in this regard.
“If we are stronger, it would help strengthen Pakistan too. In bilateral relations, we have achieved lots of targets in past five years. We had high level exchanges and PM and President of Pakistan visited China last year. We agreed to develop CPEC 2.0 with a high degree development and build Gwadar New Airport, highway and special economic zone.
Second phase of CPEC would involve building an industrial park. In second phase of CPEC we will involve all the stakeholders from Pakistan. Gwadar Airport is functional now and it would greatly help the people of Gwadar and other parts of the area,” she said.
The minister said that in CPEC 2.0, China will focus on agriculture, industry and mining sectors.
“In agriculture, three groups of young Pakistani students have completed their training in China and have become now professionals. In Xinjiang, 2000 Pakistani professionals have trained. After training they would return to Pakistan and help train more Pakistani develop agriculture sector on modern trends. We also have asked our modern agriculture centers to collaborate with their Pakistani counterparts so as more and more Pakistanis can benefit from the modern technology to boost Agri sector in Pakistan,” she said.
She said that in the industry area, we are also working to bolster cooperation. The industrial park would help us in a big way. We have already established an industrial park to develop home appliances, and it would provide 6000 direct and 10,000 indirect jobs to local people. In a short time, it would provide 20,000 jobs to Pakistanis, she added.
She said that in mining cooperation, we are about to launch investment negotiation.
“In education sector, Pakistan is number one country to get international scholarships. Now many provinces are offering international scholarships to young Pakistanis other than the approved quota and Pakistanis are benefiting from this facility. We are also trying to create sister schools in Pakistan to work with Chinese schools at high school level. The Pakistani schools can benefit from this initiative too,” she added.
Ms Sun said that under the people’s livelihood sector, China will also try to distribute 85000 medical devices in Pakistan. She said the health services are also being given to Pakistanis by visiting Chinese medical teams. With joint efforts at various levels, we will work with local, district and central governments to better help Pakistani people, she added.
“In order to educate Pakistanis on Xi Jinping’s thought, we are working in this area in dialogue on a party-to-party basis. Pakistani investors have started investment and construction of factories in China, which is a good sign, and it would help boost Pakistani exports to China,” concluded the minister.
