Two Chinese nationals shot and injured in southern Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — Authorities in Pakistan said Tuesday that a local security guard at a factory in the southern port city of Karachi shot and injured two Chinese nationals, the third attack this year in the country targeting workers from China. Zia ul Haq Langar, the home minister of the Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, confirmed the shooting incident, saying it took place in an industrial area. He said an investigation was underway.  Police officials reported that a “heated argument” and subsequent “scuffle” with the Chinese workers prompted the guard to open fire on them. The foreigners were taken to a local hospital, where one of them was said to be in “critical condition.”  The shooting comes amid Islamabad’s rare tensions with close ally Beijing that stem from growing security threats to Chinese workers and engineers working on infrastructure development projects under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI.  At a seminar in Pakistan's capital last week, the Chinese ambassador criticized the repeated attacks on Chinese citizens in the country, labeling them as “unacceptable” and a barrier to their investments in the South Asian nation.  It is extremely rare for Beijing to publicly admonish Islamabad over the security threats to its workers.  The Pakistani Foreign Ministry, in an unprecedented response, described the Chinese envoy's remarks as “perplexing" and inconsistent with "the diplomatic traditions" that exist between the two nations. Last month, a suicide car bomber in Karachi killed two Chinese engineers and wounded another, along with several local security personnel. The Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack. In March this year, a suicide car bombing in northwestern Pakistan killed five Chinese workers and their local driver traveling to a major hydropower project in the area.  The attacks have increased the number of Chinese workers killed in the country to 21 since the launch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) nearly a decade ago, which is a major infrastructure project stemming from President Xi Jinping’s global BRI plans. Beijing has repeatedly urged Islamabad to improve security for its nationals working in Pakistan.  CPEC has resulted in roads and highways, primarily coal-fired power plants in Pakistan, and the strategic deepwater Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea in the southwestern province of Balochistan.