Infrastructure Archive

Editor’s note: This article is the first in an ongoing WPR series about China’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiative, also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, sometimes described as the “flagship project” of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, is proof that geo-economics is operating alongside geopolitics to push Beijing and Islamabad closer together. In an email interview, Arif Rafiq, president of Vizier Consulting and a fellow at the Center for Global Policy, explains how CPEC’s energy and infrastructure projects can benefit both countries and discusses hurdles […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about workers’ rights in various countries around the world. For several years, Qatar has come under fire for the pervasive exploitation of migrant workers, including much-maligned systems that prevent them from leaving even after they’ve been abused. Late last year, the country adopted changes to labor regulations, though rights groups contend the country has left some of the worst aspects of the old system in place. In an email interview, Vani Saraswathi, associate editor of the online advocacy platform Migrant-Rights.org and an adviser to grassroots advocacy projects in Qatar, […]

A battle for influence is underway in Sri Lanka between India and China, played out in rival infrastructure projects and financial lifelines to an island nation that is buried in a debt crisis and trying to balance competing interests in New Delhi and Beijing. In January, Sri Lanka’s minister for regional development, Sarath Fonseka, declared that his country and India were finalizing an accord to develop the strategically located but underutilized Trincomalee port in northeastern Sri Lanka. This was seen by some domestic Sri Lankan observers as an attempt by their government to appease India in the face of growing […]

That high-level corruption is a serious problem in much of the world is no surprise. But when the Odebrecht case—a massive corruption scandal, possibly even the largest ever uncovered anywhere—burst onto the front pages of newspapers in nearly a dozen Latin American countries, it raised an important question: Is the uncovering and prosecution of major cases of graft a good sign or a bad one? Is it evidence that corruption is even more widespread than anyone knew and becoming worse? Or is it proof that the age of endemic corruption is coming to an end? The wrongdoing at Odebrecht, a […]

During one week in mid-February, Pakistan suffered a series of terrorist attacks in all four of its provinces: Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In all, 200 people were killed across the country in just seven days. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, or JuA—a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP—claimed responsibility for the majority of the attacks, while the TTP and the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed separate responsibility for others, including the Feb. 16 suicide bombing of a Sufi shrine in Sehwan that killed 90 people. The multiple assaults perpetrated by different militants have raised concerns about […]

On Feb. 7, officials in Egypt’s Ministry of Housing abruptly announced that a Chinese company had backed out of a $3 billion agreement to construct the first phase of a new Egyptian capital in the desert 30 miles east of Cairo. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), a government-backed general contractor that has taken on megaprojects around the world, had secured a loan to cover the costs of building the wildly ambitious new capital, which has been criticized as a boondoggle. But it was unable to agree with the Egyptian government on an exact price per square meter to […]