Details Emerge of China-Financed Dam Project in Pakistan
By Jane Perlez and Yufan Huang

In all the bravura of the recent $45 billion offer by President Xi Jinping of China to build roads, rails and dams in Pakistan, it was hard to decipher when construction would begin, and what in a long list of infrastructure projects would be tackled first.

One clue emerged in the announcement in the Chinese state news media last week, after Mr. Xi left Pakistan: A modest-size dam on the Jhelum River at a site 35 miles east of the capital, Islamabad, will be the first project financed by China’s $40 billion Silk Road Fund.

That fund was established to finance projects in China’s Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, plans often cited by Mr. Xi that are intended to connect China to Europe over land through Central Asia and Russia, and by ports through a separate maritime route.

Power shortages in Pakistan are so dire — largely because few individuals or government departments, including the military, pay for electricity — that the country’s National Planning Commission estimated, in a report published in 2013, that a lack of energy reduced annual economic growth by at least 2 percent. Hydropower is seen as an answer.

The Karot dam, as the structure on the Jhelum River is to be called, is expected to cost $1.65 billion and will be financed on a commercial basis, the Chinese state news media said. According to the website of the People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, the Silk Road Fund and the World Bank will buy shares in China Three Gorges South Asia Investment Ltd., a subsidiary of the Three Gorges Corporation, a state-run behemoth that builds dams at home and, increasingly, abroad.

The Silk Road Fund, along with the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank, will issue loans to the Karot Power Company, which is in turn a subsidiary of China Three Gorges South Asia Investment, for the construction.

The power generated by the dam will be sold to Pakistan’s national grid, a creaky system that leaks electricity and is run by utilities often described as ridden with corruption.

Pakistan’s need for dams fits neatly with China’s dam-building prowess. Chinese companies and banks are now the biggest builders and financiers of global dam-building. They are involved in some 330 dams in 74 countries, mostly in Asia and Africa, according to International Rivers, a nongovernmental organization that works to protect rivers and communities affected by dams.

China is not a newcomer to dams in Pakistan. Sinohydro, another state-owned company, built the Gomal Zam Dam in South Waziristan, in the ungoverned tribal areas where the Taliban freely operate. Several Chinese engineers were kidnapped during the dam’s construction.

Under the terms of the package announced by Mr. Xi, China has demanded protection for its workers at new projects, and the Pakistanis are delivering. According to Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, the government is creating a new special army division of 10,000 troops that will be headed by a two-star general and dedicated to the Chinese workers. The force will include contingents from the Special Services Group, Pakistan’s elite commando force, and will have its own air support.

Since the completion of major dam-building projects in China, the Three Gorges Corporation has been hunting for business abroad, and it has been willing to take on environmentally risky projects where it has faced heated local opposition along the Amazon and in the rain forests of Sarawak, Malaysia, said Peter Bosshard, interim executive director of International Rivers.

But more recently the company has met with International Rivers to discuss environmental issues, Mr. Bosshard said. It was encouraging, he said, that the company was not embarking on building the $8.5 billion Diamer-Bhasha dam on the Indus River in Pakistan, which has long been delayed for a number of reasons, including potential environmental damage and social dislocation. That dam will have a generating capacity of 4,500 megawatts and would flood the farms of 35,000 people, International Rivers says.

By contrast, the Karot dam, according to the builder’s environmental impact statement, would generate about 720 megawatts of power and result in about 500 people losing their land. Construction is expected to start at the end of this year, Karot Power says.

There is a word of warning, however, from Bryan Tilt, associate professor of anthropology at Oregon State University, who has studied dam projects in China. It is difficult to judge, he said, the quality of the dam builder’s assessment on the number of people who would be forced to move.

“Punjab Province, where the dam is to be sited, is the most populous in Pakistan, so there will likely be population displacement associated with the project,” Mr. Tilt said in an interview.

絲路基金首發 投資巴基斯坦

絲路基金第一筆投資確定落在巴基斯坦，新華社報導，絲路基金與三峽集團合作，將投資巴基斯坦卡洛特水電案，預計今年底開工，2020年投入營運，30年後無償轉讓給巴基斯坦政府。

大陸國家主席習近平20日訪問巴基斯坦期間，雙方簽署「巴基斯坦水電專案」的合作備忘錄，這也是大陸2014年底推出「絲路基金」後的首個投資項目。

絲路基金2014年12月29日在北京註冊成立，首期資本100億美元，投資重點鎖定「一帶一路」。

卡洛特水電站位於巴基斯坦吉拉姆河，是該河水電五個梯級電站中的第四級，規劃裝機容量72萬千瓦，年發電32.13億度，總投資金額約16.5億美元。絲路基金宣布入股三峽南亞公司，與長江三峽集團等機構，聯合開發卡洛特水電站等能源項目。

中巴兩國還同意，以中巴經濟走廊為引領，以瓜達爾港、能源、交通基礎設施和產業合作為重點，形成「1+4」的經濟合作布局，同意盡快完成《中巴經濟走廊遠景規劃》，簽約金額達460億美元。

巴基斯坦最大的財經日報《商業紀事報》報導指，習近平此行預計將簽署32個項目協議，其中16個集中在能源領域，五個與瓜達爾港有關。習近平也將為多個項目揭幕或奠基，包括中興通訊旗下中興能源的900MW電站項目，中國電建所屬水電顧問集團投資建設的薩塞爾50MW風電項目。

大陸這次在巴基斯坦的投資額，已經遠超過美國至今在巴基斯坦的援助額。

原文參照：
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/details-emerge-of-china-financed-dam-project-in-pakistan

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20150428/c28dam/zh-hant/

2015-04-22．經濟日報．A9．兩岸．記者李仲維