The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the web of associated dams, highways, tunnels and power stations that Beijing has built across Gilgit-Baltistan and the areas Pakistan calls Azad Jammu and Kashmir constitute one of the most audacious territorial grabs in modern history. These projects do not run along the edge of a disputed region. They slice straight through its heart, through land that belongs to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, land seized by Pakistan in 1947-48 and later mortgaged to China through the illegal 1963 border agreement. Every kilometre of new asphalt on the Karakoram Highway, every megawatt of electricity from Diamer-Bhasha, Kohala, Bunji, Azad Pattan and the dozens of smaller hydel stations, every fibre-optic cable laid along the Indus is constructed on soil that is legally Indian. The occupation is no longer maintained only by Pakistani bayonets. It is now being cemented, literally, by Chinese concrete, Chinese steel and Chinese money.
The scale of the intrusion is breath-taking. More than thirty billion dollars of Chinese loans and investments have poured into this narrow strip of Indian territory since 2015. Gigantic dams rise on rivers whose waters are governed by the Indus Waters Treaty, yet the treaty never imagined a third nuclear power would gain physical control over the headworks. Tunnels wide enough for heavy armour are bored through mountains that overlook Ladakh. Airfields capable of handling fighter jets appear beside civilian highways. Surveillance towers equipped with facial recognition cameras watch every village square. Thousands of People’s Liberation Army personnel, often described as “engineers” yet travelling in uniform and escorted by Pakistani special forces, live in fortified enclaves from Chilas to Muzaffarabad. Local residents speak openly of entire valleys handed over on ninety-nine-year leases, of mineral wealth extracted without royalties reaching local hands, of rivers diverted before the water even crosses the Line of Control.
The environmental devastation is catastrophic and irreversible. Blasting for the Karakoram Highway Phase II and the Gilgit-Skardu road has destabilised slopes that were already fragile after the 2005 earthquake and the 2010 floods. Black carbon from construction machinery accelerates the melting of glaciers that feed the Indus. Reservoirs created by Chinese built dams will submerge ancient petroglyphs at Chilas, drown fertile orchards in Tangir and Darel and turn the Diamer valley into a lifeless lake. Downstream, in the plains of Punjab and Sindh, the same dams will give the upstream controllers the ability to release floodwaters or withhold them at will. The people who actually living in these mountains receive neither reliable electricity nor fair compensation. They watch power lines carry their river’s energy hundreds of kilometres away while their own homes stay dark eighteen hours a day.
The human cost is even more grotesque. Anyone who questions the projects disappears. Leaders of the Awami Action Committee in Gilgit, traders who block the highway to protest illegal taxation, students who raise slogans for land rights, journalists who photograph Chinese military convoys, all vanish into the same black hole that has already swallowed thousands in Balochistan. Midnight raids, unmarked vehicles, torture cells inside abandoned CPEC workers’ hostels turned interrogation centres; these are the new facts of life in what was once among the most peaceful corners of the subcontinent. When women marched in Skardu carrying empty cooking gas cylinders and placards demanding ownership of their ancestral land, paramilitary troops fired tear gas and live rounds. When Hunza villagers sat on the highway for twenty three days in 2025, the state responded with internet blackouts and mass arrests. The message is unmistakable: the mountains, the rivers, the minerals, the very future of the people belong to the corridor now, not to those born there.
Across the Line of Control, the strategic consequences are immediate and chilling. All weather roads reach within artillery range of Indian positions in Kargil and Siachen. Bridges built to Chinese military specifications span gorges that were once natural barriers. Fibre optic cables laid parallel to the highway give China real time battlefield awareness of the western Himalayas. The same dams that drown villages upstream can, in a crisis, be used to flood military advantage downstream. The presence of PLA troops, even if Pakistan insists they are only “technical personnel”, means that any future conflict over Kashmir would no longer be bilateral. It would automatically involve the world’s second largest military power already deployed on Indian soil.
The economic promises that accompanied the fanfare have proved hollow. Of the hundreds of thousands of jobs advertised, most have gone to workers imported from Punjab or mainland China. Local graduates with engineering degrees serve tea in CPEC canteens while Mandarin speaking supervisors draw six figure salaries. Small traders who once prospered from traditional routes to Central Asia now pay multiple illegal taxes to keep the corridor’s trucks moving. Tourism, the one industry that brought genuine prosperity to Gilgit, Hunza and Skardu, has collapsed under heavy militarisation and repeated highway blockades born of local anger. The only visible growth is in barbed wire, checkpoints and private security companies hired to protect Chinese nationals.
Yet the most extraordinary of all is the rebellion brewing among the very people Beijing and Islamabad claim to be helping. From the streets of Muzaffarabad to the high pastures of Astore, from the fishing villages of Gwadar to the apple orchards of Bagh, ordinary citizens have realised that the corridor is not bringing prosperity. It is extracting it. Women march with empty pots. Students burn Chinese flags. Traders shut the gates of Sost dry port. Fishermen blockade Gwadar port to stop Chinese trawlers. Entire districts observe wheel jam strikes that paralyse the supposedly unstoppable corridor for weeks at a time. Each protest is crushed, each activist disappeared, each highway reopened at gunpoint only strengthens the conviction that this is not development. It is colonisation wearing the mask of infrastructure.
The world may choose to look away, dazzled by glossy videos of ribbon cuttings and promises of regional connectivity, but the reality carved into the living rock of the Karakoram is brutally simple. A foreign power has occupied Indian territory with the active collaboration of the original occupier. It has built permanent military infrastructure on that territory. It has altered the flow of rivers that sustain millions downstream. It has silenced dissent with disappearances and live ammun…
Impact of CPEC and China- Pakistan Projects near Kashmir
