China Spent 3 Years and $275m Building a Tunnel to Reach Pakistan

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China's New Silk Road: Boom or Dust for Pakistan?  AFP, Nov 15, 2015.
http://www.afp.com/en/news/china ... om-or-dust-pakistan

Note:
(a) The website of South China Morning Post today republishes the AFP report, but changes the title to: "No Obstacle Too Big; China builds US$275 million tunnel through Pakistan mountain for new highway to replace the old Silk Road.
(b) Regarding the AFP title. Of course, "boom or bust" is the phrase. Yet the title is a wordplay, based on sentence 1: "the new Silk Road is under construction in northern Pakistan, but locals living on the border are yet to be convinced they will receive more from it than dust."

(c) "The town of Sost is gateway to millions in customs duties, with its rickety stalls of corrugated iron engraved in Mandarin and Urdu, its cross-border secret agents and its dusty petrol station's abrupt service. It is the first stop along a new $46 billion 'economic corridor' designed by China in Pakistan."
(i) For Sost, see Sust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sust
(a village; is the last town inside Pakistan on the Karakoram Highway before the Chinese border; Pakistani immigration and customs departments are based here)
(ii) abrupt (adj): "unceremoniously curt <an abrupt manner>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abrupt
(iii) 中国－巴基斯坦经济走廊
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/中國－巴基斯坦經濟走廊

Quote: "(中文简称：'中巴经济走廊'），是指一系列中国与巴基斯坦合作的大型工程计划，长达3000公里，投资460亿美元[1]。也将成为一带一路的枢纽和旗舰项目[2][3]。此计划最先在2013年5月中国国务院总理李克强访问巴基斯坦的时候提出，旨在连接新疆维吾尔自治区与瓜达尔港的高速公路、铁路运输，以及石油和天然气的管道

(d) "Drivers from China arrive through the Khunjerab Pass, the world's highest paved border crossing at 4,600 metres (15,000 feet) above sea level, and unload their goods encircled by the magnificent Karakoram mountains, swirled with snow."
(i) Khunjerab Pass  红其拉甫 山口/口岸
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khunjerab_Pass(Its name is derived from Wakhi 'Khun' means Home and 'Jerav' means spring water/water falling)
(ii)
(A) The Wakhi language is spoken by Wakhi people, who live in Wakhan Corridor 瓦罕 走廊 of Afghanistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakhan_Corridor

If you look at the second map in Pakistan

, you will see the Corridor is right on top (north) of Gilgit-Baltistan (mentioned in (d) below).
(B) Note the pronunciation of Wakhan, which is NOT 瓦罕.

Wakhan Salient
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... lish/wakhan-salient

(e) "Ali Qurban fears losing his beloved region in Islamabad's grand dance with Beijing.  'This is my land of Gilgit-Baltistan -- not that of Pakistan or China,' the local activist and occasional poet cries. * * * Gilgit-Baltistan was long a collection of small kingdoms before being attached to Pakistan in the 1970s.  It does not have provincial status"
(i) Gilgit-Baltistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgit-Baltistan
(is the northernmost administrative territory [a level below a province] of Pakistan)
(ii) The word "attached" is kind of misleading.

Line of Control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_Control

Pakistan and India has established this control since 1947, the year of partition of south Asia. China has had EFFECTIVE control of Aksai Chin 阿克赛钦 since the 1962 war with India, which insists Aksai Chin be part of her own state of Jammu and Kashmir (needless to say, China denies it).

Gilgit-Baltistan consists of the most part of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir.