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Pakistan
This Week in AsiaGeopolitics

Disappeared Chinese engineer holds ties with Pakistan hostage

Amid a breakdown in relations with the US and questions over China’s commitment to its Belt and Road investments, the suspected kidnapping of Pingzhi Liu could not have come at a worse time for Islamabad

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang with Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president in 2013. Photo: AFP
James M. Dorsey
Chinese engineer Pingzhi Liu went missing almost a month ago. It took Pakistani authorities three weeks to classify Liu’s disappearance as a probable kidnapping that could have significant political and economic consequences. Identifying the mysterious disappearance as a kidnapping is not only embarrassing because Liu was one of thousands of Chinese working in Pakistan who are guarded by a specially created 15,000-man Pakistani military unit. It is also awkward because it coincides with apparent Chinese questioning of aspects of the US$56 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a crown jewel of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, and increasingly strained relations between Pakistan and the United States.
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Liu, 36, was accorded military protection even though his project, the Karot Hydropower Plant, located near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, is not part of CPEC. Karot was the first project financed by China’s state-owned US$40 billion Silk Road fund, established in 2014 by President Xi Jinping to foster increased investment in Eurasia. Liu went missing on December 20 while on night duty. He was last seen walking out of a tunnel at about 3.30am while talking on his phone. No claim for his potential kidnapping or ransom has been made.
The Karot Hydropower Plant, the first project financed by China’s Silk Road fund. Photo: Karot Power
The Karot Hydropower Plant, the first project financed by China’s Silk Road fund. Photo: Karot Power

That Liu was working on a project in Punjab rather than Balochistan, a troubled region with a history of attacks on Chinese personnel, has set alarm bells ringing.

China last month warned its nationals in Pakistan, a country plagued by religious and ethnic militancy, of plans for a series of imminent terrorist attacks on Chinese targets.

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“It is understood that terrorists plan in the near term to launch a series of attacks against Chinese organisations and personnel in Pakistan,” the Chinese embassy in Pakistan said on its website. The embassy warned all “Chinese-invested organisations and Chinese citizens to increase security awareness, strengthen internal precautions, reduce trips outside as much as possible, and avoid crowded public spaces”.

Pakistan’s stance on militants alienated the US. Is China next?

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