Author

Arif, Hussain

Degree

Master of Business Administration Executive

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Year of Award

2017

Project Type

MBA Executive Research Project

Access Type

Restricted Access

Executive Summary

The CPEC as part of Chinese visionary “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative is often seen as a development project or profit-seeking venture, where everyone wants to have the lions share, even at the cost of other most important factors of national and international significance. This perspective leads to excessive focus on trade, investment and economic matters. Whereas, there could be other more holistic perspectives that can accrue even better prospects and win-win outcomes. The analogy of CPEC could be drawn with internet because both represent the concept of connectivity, of course one physical and other virtual but both take us to the ‘Blue Ocean’ where endless opportunities await us, provided we have the foresight and right preparation to take advantage of unexplored opportunities. This paper’s aim is to argue that for the CPEC to become a success story, it is imperative to adopt an approach that promotes regional and global integration. This can only be achieved by using the enhanced connectivity to the near, far and wide, with the purpose to accelerate people-to-people/ cultural exchanges and heritage projects to bring about a solid foundation, mutual understanding and a common purpose from which more tangible infrastructural projects, technology and scientific knowledge transfers can take place. An endeavor has been made in this paper to suggest constructivist and collaborative approach to the CPEC project, and shall encourage opinion and policy makers to consider the importance of it becoming a regional initiative.

CPEC being a critical off- shoot of OBOR is designed to establish new trade links for the purpose of enhancing connectivity with primary focus on economy, therefore aims for the development, energy-security and prosperity of all stake holders. By improving the regional economy; the poverty will be reduced and roots of terrorism will also gradually diminish, automatically leading to stability of region including Central Asia and the Middle East. Consequently, it will pave the way for increasing economic activities benefiting all the interested parties (Lozada, 2015). However, though unstated but it does have other political and military implications as well, which complicate the situation and draw competing powers to advance their interests by all possible means. The opposition to CPEC by India, USA and some other powers is a point in case. Hence beside huge benefits, there could be many internal and external challenges as well that need to be surmounted with collected wisdom.

Pakistan needs to tread the path carefully and skillfully to convert the challenges into opportunities. External players, especially our covert and overt enemies will not leave any stone unturned to hurt us but we need to build our internal environment conducive by capitalizing on our strengths and overcoming weaknesses through better governance, transparency, planning, justice and preservance. In this study an effort has been made to draw upon collective wisdom to find out the right approach and measures to optimize the competitive advantage of CPEC for the people of Pakistan. The critical assumptions of interpretive methodology emphasized that the material World can only be studied through subjectivities of opinion and social perspectives, Thus in this paper policy statements, positions

expressed through print and electronic media to argue that CPEC offers a power context in which different identities to be reckoned with, will be internally reconfigured and externally re aligned to maximize their interests. This will offer some serious challenges to the leadership at the helm of affairs. The responsibility of academic research is to foresee and provide theoretical tools to meet the challenges ahead of state and society in Pakistan. All questions put across in the objectives have been adequately addressed during the course of study. It was basic exploratory study that followed hypothetical deductive model and adopted convenient representative sampling for primary research.

Pages

ix, 50

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