A Dubai and a Shenzhen in Gwadar?

Abstract The new Gwadar port, at the far end of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, has for two decades been the site of two development models promising miraculous growth: a “Dubai model” of cascading investments in real estate, and a “Shenzhen model” of infrastructure-based, service and logistics delivery. In this essay, the author asks: How did these models forecast miraculous transformation of Gwadar? What motivated the choice of these models at the turn of the century? The author argues that these development pathways were enabled through the coterminous opening of the Dubai real estate market, China’s export of foreign direct investment, and 9/11, which empowered Pakistan to imagine itself at the center of a connected Asia. Also, since the 1950s the Baloch have resisted the appropriation of the province’s energy and mineral resources by the center seeing it as top-down extraction, non-consultative, and depriving them of benefit. Development serves as an extension of state control.