Beyond CPEC: Pakistan’s Techno-Geopolitics of Minerals and Connectivity

by Mirza Abdul Aleem BAIG

Pakistan stands at a crossroads where rocks and rails have become as consequential as techno-geopolitics. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, once sold domestically as an epochal strategic lifeline and abroad as a flagship of Beijing’s Belt and Road, is being quietly re-priced by new realities; Islamabad’s fiscal fragility, persistent security threats to infrastructure and personnel, and a Beijing that is demonstrably more selective about political risk and financial returns.

The clearest sign of that shift arrived when the Asian Development Bank (ADB) moved to fill a financing gap on the Main Line-1 (ML-1) railway – a portion of what was for years pitched domestically as the crown jewel of CPEC. Reports close to the talks say the ADB has formally agreed to finance roughly $2 billion for an urgent upgrade of the Karachi-Rohri stretch, a pragmatic pivot that reframes who bankrolls Pakistan’s connectivity future.

That accounting matter is not merely bureaucratic, it is geopolitical. ML-1 is the spine that links Karachi’s ports to mineral belts and industrial nodes across southern Pakistan. When the financing of that spine moves from a single large bilateral sponsor to a multilateral lender, the terms, conditions and incentives change.

Multilateral finance brings conditionalities – cost audits, phased implementation tied to revenue models, and safeguards while also signalling to other investors that a project is now judged by commercial bankability rather than political symbolism alone. Pakistan’s freight economics and the viability of its export corridors will now be judged by a broader market of creditors and insurers, not by a single strategic partner.

At the same time, multilateral and Western interest in Pakistan’s mineral wealth has graduated from cautious diplomacy to tangible financing. The Reko Diq copper-gold project in Balochistan – a prize that has long been fought over in courts and corridors of power has secured a substantive ADB financing package reported at about $410 million to de-risk near-term development under Barrick Gold’s stewardship.

Reko Diq alone promises to be transformational if it reaches planned capacity; analysts estimate massive copper flows and decades of revenue potential, precisely the sort of supply that industrialized economies prize for clean-technology supply chains. That financing package, coupled with discussions involving the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Export Development Canada and the International Finance Corporation, signals that Pakistan’s subterranean wealth is now a site of competition among far more than one geopolitical patron.

Why does this matter beyond balance sheets? Because minerals are raw materials for modern power; copper for grids and EVs, lithium for batteries, and rare earth elements for magnets, semiconductors, and wind-turbine generators. Control over extraction, processing, and logistics is no longer a narrow commercial play – it is strategic infrastructure for the digital-green economy.

Washington has spoken openly about exploring cooperation with Pakistan on critical minerals and hydrocarbons. U.S. officials and firms are eager to diversify supply chains that today rely heavily on single-source processors. That interest creates leverage for Islamabad; if Pakistan can demonstrate transparent concessions, local beneficiation, and credible security, it can attract Western capital and technology that go well beyond one-off resource sales.

Beijing’s posture, meanwhile, looks less like abandonment than recalibration. Rather than a theatrical pivot away from Islamabad, China appears to be tightening its risk filter; pausing or stepping back from headline megaprojects that are politically exposed or face weak returns, while preserving narrower strategic levers – commercial purchases of minerals, targeted investments, and cautious engagement with regional contingencies such as Afghanistan.

Beijing’s interest in Afghanistan is illustrative; China has quietly deepened ties with the Taliban regime to secure borders and counter extremist spillover, yet it has avoided immediate, large-scale capital commitments until security, legitimacy and guarantees are clearer. That cautious hedging – keep corridors possible, but avoid headline losses – is Beijing’s new default.

For Islamabad the consequence is unmistakable; the era of depending on a single strategic creditor to underwrite both prestige and shoulder-to-shoulder development is over. Pakistan now faces a world in which multilateral lenders, Western export agencies and private investors can compete to finance its railways, ports and mines – but they will do so on terms. Those terms involve transparency, environmental and social safeguards, bankable project designs, and credible security arrangements where projects are sited.

If Pakistan succeeds in meeting those conditions it can extract not only ore and freight revenues but also the technology, smelting capacity and downstream industrialisation that produce jobs and durable value. If it does not, Islamabad risks trading one set of conditional dependencies for another; fragmented projects, corrosive short-term loans, and the political costs of deferred promises.

Techno-politics also demands a rethinking of how value is captured. A raw copper shipment is worth far less to a country than a cathode or a processed alloy destined for semiconductor foundries. The real prize is not just resource ownership but the capacity to move up the value chain – smelting, refining, magnet separation for rare earths, and eventually local fabrication of components.

Achieving that requires policy clarity; concession terms that incentivize local processing, phased revenue sharing that funds local development, and partnerships that include technology transfer clauses rather than pure extraction contracts. Multilateral financiers and Western companies are more likely to insist on these structures; China’s firms may not always prioritize them unless they see clear returns.

The choice Pakistan faces is therefore less a binary between Beijing and Washington and more a domestic question of governance. Will Pakistan treat minerals and connectivity as strategic national assets or as quick cash opportunities? Security remains the non-negotiable backdrop, attacks on infrastructure and threats to expatriate personnel have repeatedly raised the insurance and risk premium on projects in troubled regions.

Foreign partners whether Chinese contractors, ADB teams, or U.S. firms require credible, predictable security arrangements before they bring in large-scale staff and capital. That means Islamabad must invest political capital in stabilizing project zones and improving governance, because investors buy predictability as much as they buy mineral deposits.

The reality is that Pakistan’s strategic importance is now being judged by the markets as much as by techno-geopolitics. The ML-1 episode and the Reko Diq financing together show that the country’s options have multiplied; multilateral capital can substitute for bilateral largesse, Western interest can bring high-quality technology and standards, and China will remain a buyer and partner but on a stricter, return-oriented basis.

Islamabad’s task is to translate this moment of external competition into domestic reform; legislate integrated minerals and industrial strategies, make flagship infrastructure genuinely bankable, and insist that foreign partnerships create downstream capability, not merely export raw wealth.

If Pakistan manages that transition, it can convert subterranean wealth and transport corridors into sustained industrialisation and bargaining power. If it fails, it will repeat a familiar pattern; resources exported cheaply in return for security guarantees, prestige projects that stall for lack of funding, and a constant scramble for bailouts.

The choice is not which external friend to keep, but whether Pakistan will finally govern its resources and projects as strategic assets for its people – or continue treating them as bargaining chips in great-power techno-geopolitics.