Reimagining Pakistan’s Role in China–Pakistan Cooperation Beyond the Corridor Model under CPEC 2.0

Abstract

This study reinterprets China-Pakistan relations in the era of CPEC 2.0. It argues that the earlier description of Pakistan as a strategic pivot, a connecting state, and a demonstration case for the Belt and Road Initiative remains useful but no longer explains the present stage of cooperation. CPEC 1.0 was organized around urgent infrastructure deficits, especially energy generation, transport corridors, and Gwadar Port. CPEC 2.0 is more demanding: it seeks to convert that physical base into industrial capacity, agricultural modernization, mining value chains, digital connectivity, skills formation, and wider regional coordination. At the same time, the corridor now operates within a dense risk environment shaped by fiscal vulnerability, energy-sector stress, provincial grievances, insecurity in Balochistan and along the Afghan border, and the geopolitical constraints created by India-Pakistan rivalry and wider great-power competition. The study therefore proposes the concept of Pakistan as a resilient hub. A resilient hub is not simply a transit space. It is a cooperation platform able to keep routes functional, turn infrastructure into production and employment, manage local and security risks, and provide regional public goods under pressure. Drawing on policy-document analysis, historical-institutional interpretation, and a risk-governance framework, the study develops four dimensions of resilience: connectivity resilience, economic resilience, governance resilience, and regional resilience. The argument is that the future of China-Pakistan relations will depend less on the repetition of friendship language than on the institutional conversion of trust into visible developmental outcomes. The central task of the new era is therefore to move from a friendship narrative to a governance narrative, and from a strategic corridor to a resilient hub.