GWADAR, Pakistan — Pakistan’s top civil and military leaders on Sunday opened a new international trade route by seeing off a Chinese ship that will export goods to the Middle East and Africa from the newly built Gwadar port in insurgency-wracked Baluchistan province.
The first convoy of Chinese trucks carrying goods for sale abroad arrived in Pakistan a day earlier through newly constructed roads that link China’s northwestern Xinjiang region with southwest Pakistan.
China is building a network of roads and power plants under a project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is expected to absorb $46 billion in Chinese investment in the coming decades.