Free Republic

The world will witness a Chinese-anointed Afghan Government led by the 'New Taliban' -- a manufactured and packaged product of China Kabul has fallen to Taliban all over again. The 20 years of effort in importing democracy from the United States of America has failed, as expected. None can be blamed for Afghanistan to be in this situation today, except its own incumbent government, political leaders and trained armed forces, who were not sincere in delivering their assigned roles for the nation. The Afghan military and political leadership have given up without a fight. It highlights the nature of the...

China is poised to make an exclusive entry into post-U.S. Afghanistan with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source close to government officials in Afghanistan told The Daily Beast that Kabul authorities are growing more intensively engaged with China on an extension of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—the flagship project of BRI, which involves the construction of highways, railways and energy pipelines between Pakistan and China—to Afghanistan.

Two police officers, three gunmen confirmed dead in attack claimed by the armed separatist group Baloch Liberation Army. Armed gunmen have killed two policemen as they stormed the Chinese consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, security officials say, in a raid claimed by ethnic Baloch separatists. Security forces killed all three attackers and secured the building shortly after the raid was launched on Friday morning, Pakistan's military said in a statement. No Chinese citizens or Pakistani civilians were killed, security officials said. "All of our Chinese friends and officials who work at the consulate, 21 in total, all...

GILGIT, Pakistan—On a July morning, Saqlain Abbas, 26 years old, stood before rows of students, Mandarin textbook in hand, while a Pakistani soldier sat silently at the back of the classroom with a gun at his side. Hanging on the wall was a collection of idyllic Chinese landscapes—the reddish-orange mountains of Gansu, the placid waters of a lake in Xinjiang. Here, at Karakoram International University, in a remote, rugged terrain that is still contested territory between India and Pakistan, the Pakistani military has been sponsoring free Mandarin courses for indigent students. “Previously, students were more inclined toward English,” Muhammad Ilyas,...

China is building a city for 5,000,000 Chinese nationals at a cost of $150 million in Gwadar as part of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This will be the first such Chinese city in South Asia. Half-a-million Chinese citizens, who will be housed in this proposed city by 2022, will be workforce for the financial district that Beijing is planning to set up in the Pakistani port city of Gwadar. Only Chinese citizens will live in this gated zone, which basically means that Pakistan will be used as a colony of China. ET has learnt that the China-Pak Investment Corporation bought...

Colonialists come with a veil of pretence. They show their true colours only after settling down on the territory they want to conquer. For a country (Pakistan), which is the product of 100s of years of struggle against colonialism, it shouldn’t be too hard to diagnose the colonial ambitions of a rising power, in this case China, which has now made its ambitions open to the world in the form of “One Belt, One Road (OBOR)” initiative that includes China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a “flagship” project. Chinese official daily Global Times says, “The global economy needs new driving forces,...

China's move to construct five tunnels to open up a new section of the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) last month has signalled Beijing’s intent to go forward with ambitious projects despite India’s increasingly vocal concerns and rising security concerns in the restive disputed region. In a major project that will ensure year-round land connectivity linking China and Pakistan through PoK, the China Road and Bridge Corporation has constructed five seven km-long tunnels on the Karakoram Highway. Earlier, this particular section had been cut off on account of a barrier lake formed at Attabad, which had blocked access since...

On August 9 the California Teachers Association and its most famous employee, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, announced that they were suing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for $3.1 billion in money they think the public schools are owed under Proposition 98. The fees for the lawyers for both sides of this dispute will be paid for by the taxpayers, using money that could have been used to fix stopped-up toilets in our schools or buy textbooks for the kids. Prop. 98 was passed by telling the voters it set a minimum level of funding for K-12 public schools of...