CPEC and Gwadar: Balochistan's Corridor Economy

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a package of road, rail, energy and port projects linking Kashgar in western China to the Arabian Sea at Gwadar in Balochistan. It matters to Balochistan more than to any other province because the corridor's land route and its sea terminus are both inside it: the province carries the infrastructure, the security burden and the environmental cost, which is why the question of what share of the jobs and revenue stays locally has been the central political argument about CPEC since 2015.

Gwadar port is owned by the Government of Pakistan through the Gwadar Port Authority and operated under a long-term concession by China Overseas Ports Holding Company, a Chinese state-owned enterprise. The concession also covers the adjoining Gwadar Free Zone. The revenue-sharing terms of that concession -- how much of gross port income stays in Pakistan and how much reaches Balochistan specifically -- have been a persistent point of political contention.

Reko Diq is a copper and gold deposit in Chagai district, north-western Balochistan, and one of the largest undeveloped deposits of its kind in the world. After a long international arbitration over the cancelled original licence, the project was restructured in 2022: Barrick Gold holds 50%, Pakistani federal state-owned enterprises hold 25%, and the Government of Balochistan holds 25% on concessional terms. Production is expected in phases, and the terms of Balochistan's share remain a live political issue in the province.

This is the most-disputed claim about the corridor. Official figures cite tens of thousands of Pakistani jobs across CPEC nationally. Baloch political parties and local labour groups argue that skilled and supervisory roles on projects inside Balochistan go disproportionately to workers from other provinces or from China, leaving locals in short-term unskilled work, and that fishing and pastoral livelihoods displaced by port and road construction were not replaced. Independent, project-by-project employment data is scarce, which is itself part of the dispute.

Gwadar's fishing community, the town's largest traditional livelihood, has protested over losing access to harbour and coastal waters to port infrastructure, over large trawlers operating in waters reserved for small boats, and over shortages of drinking water and electricity in a town surrounded by major investment. The "Gwadar Ko Haq Do" movement, which drew very large crowds from 2021 onward, organised around exactly these demands rather than around the corridor in the abstract.