Assalam-o-Alaikum, my dear readers. How are you all? I hope you are well, and that your phone is charged and the Wi-Fi is behaving today.
Last week a driver uncle who takes children to school in our area stopped me at the gate and asked, “Baji, yeh CPEC kya hai? Roz TV par naam aata hai, aur kehte hain Pakistan badal jayega — lekin hamare muhalle mein abhi tak bijli bhi poori nahi aati.” I laughed, because he asked the same question millions of Pakistanis ask. We hear “CPEC” on every news channel, we see big numbers like $62 billion, and then we go home to the same load-shedding and the same expensive atta. So today I will answer his question properly, in very simple words. What is CPEC in Pakistan, what has it actually built so far, what is this “Phase 2” everyone talks about, and — the question that matters most — will it ever give ordinary Pakistanis a job? No big English words. Just the truth, with the real numbers, and the honest part about what is still delayed.
Here is the short answer first. CPEC stands for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is a package of road, railway, power, port and factory projects that connects Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea coast of Balochistan to China’s Xinjiang region, through about 3,000 kilometres of Pakistan. It was formally launched in April 2015, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad and agreements worth about $46 billion were signed. More projects were added after 2017, and today $62 billion is the figure most often quoted for the whole corridor — some sources say $65 billion. It is the biggest single part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the huge plan to build trade routes across Asia. For China, CPEC is a shortcut: instead of sending oil by ship all the way around through the Malacca Strait — a journey of about 12,000 kilometres — it can come through Gwadar and up the road to western China, about 2,395 kilometres. That shorter route is estimated to save China around $2 billion a year. For Pakistan, the promise was different: end the load-shedding, build modern roads, create jobs, and turn Gwadar into a great trading port. Ten years on, some of that promise is real, and some of it is still only a promise. This article will show you both sides.
What Is CPEC, in Simple Words?
If you forget every difficult word, remember this one picture. Imagine a long road that starts at a port on the sea in Gwadar, climbs through the mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan on the Karakoram Highway, crosses the Khunjerab Pass into China, and ends in the Chinese city of Kashgar. Along that road sit power plants, motorways, a railway, a fibre-optic cable, and new factory zones. That whole picture — the road plus everything built along it — is CPEC.
It is not one project. It is a basket of many projects, run together by Pakistan and China. The money comes mostly from Chinese state banks and companies, which finance and build the projects inside Pakistan. The official list of projects is published by the CPEC Secretariat in Islamabad, on its website cpec.gov.pk, and anyone can read it there. When you hear a politician say “CPEC is a game changer,” they are talking about this whole basket, not one road.
And one thing I must clear up, because it confuses everyone: $62 billion is the value of the projects that were agreed, not the money that has already been spent. The money actually spent so far is much less — assessments published in 2026 put it nearer $30 billion. Committed money and spent money are two different things, and when you hear the big number on TV, remember that difference.
What Has CPEC Actually Built So Far?
This is the part where the corridor deserves honest credit, because the lights in your home are part of the story.
Energy first, because that was Pakistan’s biggest pain. When CPEC started, load-shedding was 12 to 18 hours a day in many cities. I still remember doing my work by candlelight in summer, and the UPS beeping all night. Today, 17 CPEC energy projects have been completed, adding about 8,904 megawatts to the national grid, with investment of nearly $18 billion. The coal of Thar — which sat in the desert of Sindh for years while we said “Pakistan has coal” — is now producing electricity. The Sahiwal coal power plant, the Port Qasim plant, and wind and solar projects in Sindh and Punjab all came through CPEC. And there is a giant power line, the Matiari-to-Lahore high-voltage line, the first of its kind in Pakistan, which carries 4,000 megawatts of power from the plants in the south up to Punjab, where the factories and homes need it most.
Roads second. Eight major transport projects worth $6.7 billion have added 888 kilometres of modern highways and motorways, with another 853 kilometres still under construction. The Multan-to-Sukkur Motorway, the M-5, opened in 2019 — if you have driven from Lahore to Karachi, you have probably used it. The Havelian-to-Thakot section of the Karakoram Highway opened in July 2020, a beautiful and difficult road through the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And the 820-kilometre optical fibre cable from the Khunjerab Pass to Rawalpindi gave Pakistan its first land-based digital link with China — the same kind of connection our 5G future will need.
Then there is the Orange Line Metro Train in Lahore. It was Pakistan’s first modern metro train, and it changed daily life for thousands of people in Lahore who now travel from one end of the city to the other without sitting in traffic for two hours. It also gave jobs to local people during and after construction — a small example of what CPEC was supposed to do everywhere.
So how many projects are finished in total? Here the numbers differ a little depending on who is counting, and I will give you both, honestly. In November 2024, the Ministry of Planning told a National Assembly committee that 38 CPEC projects worth over $25 billion were complete, and 23 more worth $2.1 billion were under construction. Then a government progress report in August 2026 put the completed count at 45 projects worth $25.61 billion — 17 energy, 15 infrastructure, and 13 economic and social development projects. So the work is real, and it is growing. But it is also true that out of roughly 90 projects originally imagined, about a third were never even started. I will come back to that honest part below.
Gwadar Port — the Heart of the Corridor
If CPEC has a heart, it is Gwadar. The port sits on the Arabian Sea coast of Balochistan, near the mouth of the Persian Gulf, where the world’s oil ships pass. It is a deep-sea port, which means big ships can come in, and it was built by Pakistan and China together.
Today the port is operating and handling real commercial cargo — about 11,000 containers passed through it in April 2026, and in July 2026 it carried out its first ship bunkering operations, which means refuelling ships at sea. The Free Zone next to the port, where factories and warehouses are supposed to come, has finished its first phase, and the second phase is under development.
Gwadar also got a brand-new airport. The New Gwadar International Airport opened for commercial flights on 20 January 2025, built with a $246 million Chinese grant — the biggest airport in Pakistan by area. And the Eastbay Expressway, the road that connects the port to the main highway, was completed in 2022.
But here is the honest part about Gwadar, and I will not hide it from you. The port is working, but it is not yet the great trading hub we were promised. Some of the projects meant for the people of Gwadar itself are still waiting. The Pak-China Friendship Hospital and the Pak-China Technical and Vocational Institute — a hospital and a training centre that the city badly needs — were flagged as delayed in the government’s own August 2026 progress report. The Gwadar 300-megawatt coal power plant, meant to give the city its own electricity, is delayed too, and its commercial operation is now cited as December 2029, with its cost rising from $283 million to about $444 million. The government has set aside more than Rs14.2 billion for Gwadar projects in the 2026–27 development budget, for connectivity, water supply, education and municipal services. That money must now turn into things people can see and use — a hospital bed, a classroom, a tap with clean water.
What Is CPEC Phase 2? The Big Change
In September 2025, at the 14th Joint Cooperation Committee meeting in Beijing, Pakistan and China officially launched Phase 2 of CPEC — people call it CPEC 2.0. This is the most important change in the corridor since it started, so listen carefully.
Phase 1 was about building things: power plants, roads, a port. Phase 2 is about using those things to make money and jobs: factories, farming, mining, technology, and trade. Instead of more concrete, the focus is now on industry and exports. The plan runs on five new corridors of cooperation: Growth, Innovation, Green Development, Livelihood, and Regional Connectivity. In simple words: grow the economy, bring new technology, protect the environment, improve ordinary people’s lives, and connect Pakistan to Central Asia and the wider region.
In May 2026, Pakistan and China issued a joint statement that named four CPEC 2.0 items: hold the Joint Cooperation Committee meeting, advance the realignment of the Karakoram Highway between Thakot and Raikot in a phased way, build Gwadar into a regional connectivity hub, and make good use of the Khunjerab Pass. But I must be honest with you about that statement: it gave no money figure and no completion date for any of the four items. A promise without a date is only a promise. The real test of Phase 2 will be what actually gets built in 2026 and 2027.
The government has started putting money behind Phase 2 in the 2026–27 development budget: Rs1 billion for new CPEC 2.0 initiatives, Rs100 million for the CPEC Consortium of Universities so our students and researchers can work with Chinese universities, and Rs30 million for the project office that manages industrial cooperation. These are small amounts next to $62 billion, but they show the direction: the second phase is about industry, not just construction.
The Special Economic Zones and the Jobs Question
Now the question my school-gate uncle really wanted to ask: “Will my son get a job from CPEC?”
The main answer to that question is the Special Economic Zones — big factory areas where Pakistani and Chinese companies set up plants, make goods, and hire local workers. Nine zones were planned under CPEC. Four of them are at an advanced stage: Rashakai in Nowshera, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; Dhabeji in Thatta, Sindh; Allama Iqbal Industrial City in Faisalabad, Punjab; and Bostan in Balochistan.
Rashakai covers about 1,000 acres near the M-1 motorway, and its first phase was officially opened in July 2023. Dhabeji, spread over 1,530 acres, is already more than two-thirds complete and has attracted interest from over 20 firms. Recent reporting puts Dhabeji’s expected investment at around $3 billion with about 100,000 direct jobs, and Rashakai’s commitments above $2 billion with more than 50,000 jobs projected. Together, the two zones could generate up to $10 billion in annual exports by 2030, if the plans hold. An older official estimate from the Board of Investment said the four zones together could create about 475,000 direct jobs and 1 million indirect jobs — but that was an estimate from 2021, before the delays. Treat every jobs number as a plan, not a payslip, until the factories actually open their gates.
And please hear this warning from my heart, because it matters. If anyone on WhatsApp, Facebook or TikTok asks you to pay Rs5,000 or Rs10,000 for a “CPEC job” or a “CPEC registration,” it is a fraud. CPEC jobs are real jobs in real factories and projects — they are advertised by the companies themselves, and no one can sell you a seat in them. The honest way to prepare is the same advice I gave in my freelancing guide: learn a skill properly first. A young person who can weld, fix a solar panel, operate a machine, or manage a warehouse will be first in line when a factory opens in Rashakai or Dhabeji. The government teaches many of these skills free — read my guide to free courses if you have not yet.
The Honest Part — What Is Delayed or Still Missing
I promised you both sides, so here is the other side, plainly.
First, the biggest railway project, ML-1 — the upgrade of the 1,872-kilometre railway line from Karachi to Peshawar — was removed from the CPEC framework in July 2026. Its revised cost is about $7.5 billion, and Pakistan is now seeking financing from the Asian Development Bank instead. This is the project that would have carried the corridor’s freight by rail, and without it, CPEC is still mostly a road corridor. That is a real setback, and no honest article about CPEC should skip it.
Second, about a third of the roughly 90 projects originally imagined under CPEC were never started. Some were dropped, some were delayed by financing problems, and some are stuck in approvals. The Karachi Circular Railway, the Dera Ismail Khan–Zhob Highway, and several Gwadar schemes are named in government documents as stalled or slow-moving.
Third, the debt question. CPEC’s power plants were built mostly with loans, and Pakistan now pays those power producers even when the electricity is not used — that is one reason your electricity bill stays high even though we built so much generation. Supporters say the power ended the load-shedding that was strangling factories. Critics say the terms were too expensive. The truth, as usual, is in the middle: the power plants ended the worst of the blackouts, but the way they were financed is now a burden on the budget. You deserve to know both parts, not just the celebration.
None of this means CPEC is a failure. It means CPEC is unfinished. A corridor is not a ribbon-cutting ceremony — it is twenty years of work, and we are about halfway through the story.
What Does CPEC Mean for an Ordinary Pakistani?
Let me end with my own opinion, as your friend, not as a newsreader. CPEC has already changed Pakistan in ways you can touch: the motorway you drive on, the metro train in Lahore, the electricity that comes more reliably than it did ten years ago, the new airport in Gwadar. Those are real. But the part that was promised most loudly — jobs for our young people and factories that export Pakistani goods — is still mostly in the future. Phase 2 is where that promise will either be kept or broken, and the next two years will tell us which.
So what should you do with this information? Do not wait for CPEC to knock on your door. If you are young, learn a skill that a factory or a port needs — electrician work, solar installation, machine operation, warehousing, or the digital skills in my free-courses guide. If you are a small businessman in Faisalabad or Sialkot, watch the Allama Iqbal Industrial City and the export chances it may bring. And if you are from Gwadar, ask loudly — politely, but loudly — for the hospital, the training institute and the clean water your city was promised. A corridor that does not improve the life of the people who live at its end has missed its own point.
And to the driver uncle at the school gate: the next time you ask me, I will tell you what Phase 2 has actually built, not what it announced. That is a promise.
CPEC stands for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is a package of road, railway, power, port and factory projects that connects Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea to China’s Xinjiang region, over about 3,000 kilometres. It was formally launched in April 2015, it is the biggest part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and $62 billion is the figure most often quoted for the whole corridor — that is the value of the projects agreed, not the money already spent.
The count has grown over time. In November 2024 the Ministry of Planning told a National Assembly committee that 38 CPEC projects worth over $25 billion were complete, with 23 more under construction. A government progress report in August 2026 put the completed count at 45 projects worth $25.61 billion — 17 energy, 15 infrastructure, and 13 economic and social development projects. About a third of the roughly 90 projects originally imagined were never started.
CPEC Phase 2, launched at the 14th Joint Cooperation Committee meeting in Beijing in September 2025, shifts the focus from building infrastructure to industry and jobs. It runs on five corridors — Growth, Innovation, Green Development, Livelihood, and Regional Connectivity — and centres on special economic zones, agriculture, mining, technology and trade, so that the roads and power plants already built start producing factories, exports and employment.
The four advanced special economic zones — Rashakai, Dhabeji, Allama Iqbal Industrial City and Bostan — are where most future CPEC jobs are expected. Recent reporting puts Dhabeji’s expected investment at about $3 billion with around 100,000 direct jobs, and Rashakai’s at over $2 billion with more than 50,000 jobs projected. An older official estimate said the four zones could create about 475,000 direct and 1 million indirect jobs. These are plans, not guarantees — and nobody can sell you a CPEC job. Never pay anyone who asks for a fee for “CPEC registration” or a “CPEC job”; real jobs are advertised by the companies themselves.
No. The ML-1 railway upgrade — the 1,872-kilometre line from Karachi to Peshawar, with a revised cost of about $7.5 billion — was removed from the CPEC framework in July 2026. Pakistan is now seeking financing for it from the Asian Development Bank. It is still an important railway project for Pakistan, but it is no longer counted as a CPEC project.
Take care, my dear readers, and if you live near Gwadar, Rashakai, Dhabeji or Faisalabad — or if you work on any CPEC project — please tell me through our Contact Us page. I would love to hear what you see with your own eyes: what has been built, what is still waiting, and what questions you still have. Your questions are always welcome, and I will try my best to answer them.
