Balochistan’s Role in CPEC: Opportunities, Concerns and Where Things Stand in 2026

Why Balochistan matters to the corridor

Look at a map of China. Its factories are in the east, on the Pacific coast. Its oil comes from the Gulf, by a sea route of some 12,000 kilometres that passes through the narrow Strait of Malacca. China’s western regions are thousands of kilometres from any coast.

Now look at Pakistan. From the Chinese border in the far north, a road runs the length of the country to a small town on the Arabian Sea, close to the mouth of the Gulf. That town is Gwadar, in Balochistan.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, is the plan to turn that line on the map into roads, railways, pipelines, power plants and a port. Without Gwadar there is no corridor. And Gwadar is in Balochistan.

The corridor begins in China and ends in Balochistan. For years its money did the opposite: it began in Islamabad and thinned out long before it reached the coast.

A short history of Gwadar

What has been built in Balochistan

Two large mines in the province, the copper and gold deposits at Saindak and Reko Diq, are sometimes spoken of in the same breath. Saindak is run by a Chinese company. Reko Diq is being developed by a Canadian one. Neither is formally part of CPEC, but both feed the same argument about who benefits from Balochistan’s resources.

The opportunities

Supporters of the corridor, in the government and in business, make five claims.

1. A port that could change the map

Gwadar sits beside the shipping lanes that carry a large share of the world’s oil. A working port there could serve western China, Afghanistan and Central Asia, all of which lack a coast.

2. Roads where there were none

Before the corridor, a journey from Gwadar to Quetta took two days on broken tracks. The new highways have cut that sharply, opened markets for fish and dates, and made it possible to reach a hospital.

3. Industry

The free zone offers long tax holidays. The hope is that factories will come to process fish, minerals and farm goods for export, and that Balochistan’s young people will work in them.

4. Minerals

The province holds some of the world’s largest untapped deposits of copper and gold. The corridor’s second phase lists mining as a priority.

5. Skills

Chinese grants have paid for a technical institute in Gwadar, and thousands of Pakistani students, some of them from Balochistan, have studied in China on scholarships.

The concerns

Critics, among them Baloch political parties, local movements and many independent economists, answer with a longer list.

Who gets the money

Under the agreement that handed over the port, the Chinese operator is widely reported to keep about nine-tenths of the port’s revenue for forty years, with the rest going to the federal port authority. The provincial government’s share is small.

More broadly, most of the corridor’s early spending went to power plants and motorways in Punjab and Sindh. Balochistan’s leaders have complained for a decade that the “western route” through their province was built last and least.

Water and electricity

Gwadar has no reliable source of fresh water and, for years, had power for only a few hours a day. A town that cannot keep its own lights on, its people point out, has been promised that it will be the next Dubai.

Fishing

Most of Gwadar’s families live by fishing. They complain of two things: large trawlers, some from other provinces and some foreign, that strip the waters; and security rules around the port that keep small boats from their old fishing grounds.

Checkpoints

To protect Chinese workers, the state has ringed Gwadar with security posts. Residents describe being stopped and questioned many times a day in their own town. A plan in 2020 to fence the city was dropped after an outcry.

Jobs

Local people say the skilled jobs go to workers from China and from other provinces. Officials reply that the local workforce lacks the training, which is why the technical institute was built.

Fear of being outnumbered

Balochistan has few people and a great deal of land. Many Baloch fear that a boom in Gwadar would bring so many newcomers that they would become a minority in their own province. Property dealers from across the country bought up land around the town in the early years, which sharpened the fear.

The protests

In late 2021 these complaints produced something new: a mass movement in Gwadar itself. Under the name Haq Do Tehreek (“give us our rights”), and led by a local religious politician, tens of thousands of people, including very large numbers of women, sat in for weeks.

Their demands were practical:

• stop the illegal trawlers;
• remove unnecessary checkpoints;
• allow small-scale trade across the Iranian border;
• supply water and electricity.

The government promised action. The movement returned to the streets in late 2022, and in early 2023 the authorities cracked down, with arrests and a shutdown of mobile services. Its leader was later elected to the provincial assembly.

In July 2024 a different movement, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, chose Gwadar for a large gathering about enforced disappearances. It ended in clashes, deaths and arrests, and in a court case that was still being fought in 2026.

Security

Armed separatist groups in Balochistan regard the corridor as the taking of Baloch resources by outsiders, and have made Chinese workers and projects a target.

The government has raised special army and police units, thousands strong, to guard the projects. China has pressed publicly for more. In May 2026, marking 75 years of diplomatic ties, the prime minister promised the fullest possible protection for Chinese nationals.

The dilemma is plain. The more soldiers and checkpoints protect the projects, the more the local population feels occupied. The less protection there is, the fewer investors come.

2026: an unexpected boost

For most of its life Gwadar port has been strikingly quiet: a handful of ships a month, against thousands at Karachi.

In 2026 that changed, at least for a time. War in the Gulf from late February closed or endangered the Strait of Hormuz, the passage through which the region’s oil and cargo normally sail. Shipping lines looked for harbours outside the strait. Gwadar is one.

One Pakistani outlet reported that the port handled about 11,000 containers in April 2026 alone, more than in the whole of 2025, and that cargo in the first four months of the year was up by nearly half. These figures could not be checked against official data, and the same report asked how long the diversion would last.

The new airport tells a more cautious story. It handled its first commercial flight in January 2025. In 2026 it was still operating on only a few days a week.

The second phase

Officials now speak of “CPEC 2.0”. The first phase built power plants and roads. The second is meant to bring factories, farms, mines and technology, with more private companies and fewer government loans.

For Balochistan this should, in theory, be the phase that matters: free-zone industry in Gwadar, mining in the west, and the western highways finished. In practice it is harder to secure. A power station can be guarded behind a wall. A hundred workshops, farms and mines scattered across a province cannot.

How the money works

People often speak of CPEC as if China had given Pakistan 60 billion dollars. It did not. Understanding where the money came from explains a good deal of the argument about who benefits.

There were, broadly, three kinds of money.

• Commercial investment in power plants. This was the largest part. Chinese companies built and own the plants, borrowing from Chinese banks. Pakistan promised to buy their electricity at agreed prices for decades. The plants are mostly in Punjab and Sindh.
• Government loans for roads and railways. These are debts of the Pakistani state, to be repaid with interest.
• Grants. A small share was given outright. Much of what has been built in Gwadar itself, including the airport, the hospital and the technical institute, falls into this group.

So Balochistan’s showpiece projects were gifts, which is welcome. But the money that created lasting jobs and tax revenue, the power stations, went elsewhere. And the debts that paid for the roads are owed by the whole country, Balochistan included.

There is a further point. A port earns money only when ships call. For most of its life Gwadar has earned very little, so the question of how its revenue is divided has been, in practice, an argument about a share of almost nothing. If traffic grows, as it briefly did in 2026, that argument will become real.

What the province can and cannot decide

Balochistan has its own elected government and assembly in Quetta. On the corridor, their power is limited.

• Ports, national highways, railways and foreign agreements are federal subjects. The province is consulted, not obeyed.
• Security is run largely by the army and the paramilitary forces, which answer to Islamabad.
• Land belongs to the province, and it has leased the port’s free zone. That is its main lever.
• Minerals belong to the province under the Constitution, which is why mining agreements, unlike the port, need its signature.

Baloch politicians of every party, including those who govern with Islamabad’s blessing, have complained that decisions about Gwadar are taken in rooms where they are not present. A body that brings the centre and the provinces together on such projects exists on paper. It meets rarely.

What would make it work

None of these is expensive beside the sums already spent. All of them require the centre to share control, which is the heart of the matter.

Words used in this article

What to watch next

• Port figures once shipping through the Gulf returns to normal.
• Flights at the new airport.
• The first real factories in the free zone.
• Water and power for the town of Gwadar.
• Security, and whether talks with peaceful movements resume.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “China–Pakistan Economic Corridor” — opening sections read; last edited 27 September 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Gwadar Port” — opening sections read; last edited 29 August 2026.
• Arab News, “Pakistan vows ‘highest level of security’ for Chinese nationals as both nations mark 75 years of ties” — May 2026.
• Arab News, “Pakistan says stepping up security for Chinese nationals amid CPEC expansion”
• Times of Islamabad, “Gwadar port surge shocks global trade routes” — 29 April 2026; the only source for the 2026 traffic figures.
• Aaj English, “New Gwadar international airport set to open by month-end” — late 2024.
• Aaj English, “Thousands protest in Gwadar against shortage of drinking water, illegal trawling” — 2021.
• Government of Pakistan, CPEC official website — for the official project list.