KRAIT
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Do me a favor.
Try calculating the number of trucks required to pass through Karakoram highway to meet even 10% of China's current oil usage.
Then tell me if the figures don't make your eyes wide open.
Besides, the proposed karakoram highway will anyways be susceptible to Indian artillery in times of conflict.
I don't think the Chinese will be foolish enough to lay the entire lifeline of their country open to Indian Artillery regiments.
Tell me, how difficult would it be to bomb and destroy this highway in times of conflict?
China's gains
Zia Haider, an analyst at the Washington-based Stimson Center, writes that Gwadar provides China "a transit terminal for crude-oil imports from Iran and Africa to China's Xinjiang region". The network of rail and road links connecting Pakistan with Afghanistan and Central Asian republics that is envisaged as part of the Gwadar project and to which China will have access would provide Beijing an opening into Central Asian markets and energy sources, in the process stimulating the economic development of China's backward Xinjiang region.
The Pentagon report sees China's efforts to defend its interests along oil shipping sea lanes as "creating a climate of uncertainty" and threatening "the safety of all ships on the high seas". This perception overlooks the fact that China's "string of pearls" strategy has been triggered by its sense of insecurity. The United States' overwhelming presence in the Gulf and the control of its exercises over the Malacca Strait, through which 80% of China's oil imports pass, has contributed enormously to Beijing's fears that Washington could choke off its oil supply, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan.
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
Further discussion will take us more off topic