{"id":69133,"date":"2025-01-26T14:00:40","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T05:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/26\/what-went-wrong-with-pakistans-dubai-inside-the-chinese-initiative-that-is-prompting-terror-attacks"},"modified":"2025-01-26T14:00:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-26T05:00:40","slug":"what-went-wrong-with-pakistans-dubai-inside-the-chinese-initiative-that-is-prompting-terror-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=69133","title":{"rendered":"What went wrong with \u2018Pakistan\u2019s Dubai\u2019? \u2013 inside the Chinese initiative that is prompting terror attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The small port city of Gwadar has a huge new airport funded by China, but local suspicion of Beijing\u2019s true intentions threatens to wreck the project<\/p>\n<p>As the first flight touched down on the fresh tarmac at Gwadar, it was hailed by Pakistan\u2019s government as a step towards \u201cprogress and prosperity\u201d. The newly opened airport \u2013 now the largest in the country \u2013 built in Pakistan\u2019s troubled Balochistan province was \u201ca symbol of the cooperation between Pakistan and China\u201d, according to defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the optics of the event told another story. As it unfolded on 20 January, the surrounding city of Gwadar was put under a draconian security lockdown. And while several senior Pakistan government and military figures were present, their Chinese government counterparts were noticeably absent \u2013 even though it was China footing the $230m bill for the airport.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/26\/what-went-wrong-with-pakistans-dubai-inside-the-chinese-initiative-that-is-prompting-terror-attacks\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The small port city of Gwadar has a huge new airport funded by China, but local suspicion of Beijing\u2019s true intentions threatens to wreck the projectAs the first flight touched down on the fresh tarmac at Gwadar, it was hailed by Pakistan\u2019s government &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,412,50,60,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-belt-and-road-initiative","category-china","category-pakistan","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69134,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69133\/revisions\/69134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}