164-521: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor ( CPEC ; Chinese : 中巴经济走廊 ; pinyin : Zhōng bā jīngjì zǒuláng ; Urdu : چین پاکستان اقتصادی راہداری ) is a 3,000 km Chinese infrastructure network project currently under construction in Pakistan . This sea-and-land-based corridor aims to secure and shorten the route for China’s energy imports from the Middle East , avoiding the existing path through
328-547: A family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
492-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
656-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
820-432: A $ 2 billion motorway between Chitral and DI Khan , and $ 7 billion in hydroelectric projects. As of September 2017, over $ 14 billion worth of projects were under construction. In March 2018, Pakistan announced that once the ongoing energy projects were completed, future CPEC energy initiatives would focus on hydropower. In 2022, Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives, Ahsan Iqbal , criticized
984-605: A $ 2.5 billion pipeline between Gwadar and Nawabshah to eventually transport gas from Iran . Electricity from these projects will primarily be generated from fossil fuels , though hydroelectric and wind-power projects are also included, as well as the construction of one of the world's largest solar farms . Should the initial $ 46 billion worth of projects be implemented, their value would be roughly equivalent to all foreign direct investment in Pakistan since 1970, and would represent 17% of Pakistan's 2015 gross domestic product. CPEC
1148-559: A 2-lane highway. Construction on the first section between Shinkiari and Thakot began in April 2016, alongside the construction of the Havelian to Shinkiari 4-lane dual carriageway further south. Both sections are expected to be completed within 42 months at a cost of approximately $ 1.26 billion, with 90% of the funding provided by China's EXIM Bank in the form of low-interest concessional loans. Between Thakot and Raikot lies an area where
1312-622: A 2014 agreement predating CPEC, and from a grant provided by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development . Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of
1476-572: A China-run port near the Gulf of Oman , a vital route for oil tankers. Once this corridor is operational, the existing 12,000 km journey for oil transportation to China will be reduced to just 2,395 km. This is estimated to save China $ 2 billion per year. China had already acquired control of Gwadar Port on 16 May 2013. Originally valued at $ 46 billion, the value of CPEC projects was $ 62 billion as of 2020. By 2022, Chinese investment in Pakistan had risen to $ 65 billion. China refers to this project as
1640-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
1804-434: A January 2014 report entitled "Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality" that stated that "Some taxes levied on wealth, especially on immovable property, are also an option for economies seeking more progressive taxation ... Property taxes are equitable and efficient, but underutilized in many economies ... There is considerable scope to exploit this tax more fully, both as a revenue source and as a redistributive instrument." At
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#17327732163321968-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
2132-483: A broader focus of promoting market-liberalizing reforms through structural adjustment programs. This shift occurred without a formal renegotiation of the organization's charter or operational guidelines. The Ronald Reagan administration , in particular Treasury Secretary James Baker , his assistant secretary David Mulford and deputy assistant secretary Charles Dallara , pressured the IMF to attach market-liberal reforms to
2296-532: A central role in the management of balance of payments difficulties and international financial crises. Through a quota system, countries contribute funds to a pool from which countries can borrow if they experience balance of payments problems. The IMF works to stabilize and foster the economies of its member countries by its use of the fund, as well as other activities such as gathering and analyzing economic statistics and surveillance of its members' economies. The current managing director (MD) and chairperson of
2460-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
2624-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
2788-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
2952-522: A cost of approximately $ 72 million. The next 335 kilometres of roadway connect Raikot to the China-Pakistan border. Reconstruction of this section of the roadway began before the CPEC initiative, following significant damage from the 2010 Pakistan floods . Most of the reconstruction was completed by September 2012 at a cost of $ 510 million. In 2010, a large earthquake struck the region near
3116-583: A long-term plan for the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor was signed by Xu Shao Shi and Shahid Amjad Chaudhry. In February 2014, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain visited China to discuss plans for an economic corridor in Pakistan. Two months later, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with Premier Li Keqiang in China to discuss further plans, resulting in the full scope of the project being devised under Sharif's tenure. In November 2014,
3280-672: A medical college, a central laboratory, and other allied facilities, along with the supply of medical equipment and machinery. In 2020, the government released funds of Rs 320 million for a Gwadar Seawater Desalination Plant with a capacity of five million gallons per day. The funds were also allocated for expanding the optical fiber network in Gwadar, and for the construction of a fish landing jetty. The CPEC project includes significant upgrades and overhauls to Pakistan's transportation infrastructure. So far, China has announced financing for $ 10.63 billion worth of transportation infrastructure under
3444-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
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#17327732163323608-476: A national security issue for China by fostering economic development in the Xinjiang region, thus reducing militant influence on Muslim separatists among the native Uyghurs . Following the proposal by Chinese President Li Keqiang in 2013, the preliminary study on this project was completed in 2014, acknowledging the hostile environment and complicated geographic conditions but emphasizing the importance of having
3772-487: A position of oversight of only exchange rates, their function became one of surveillance of the overall macroeconomic performance of member countries. Their role became a lot more active because the IMF now manages economic policy rather than just exchange rates. In addition, the IMF negotiates conditions on lending and loans under their policy of conditionality , which was established in the 1950s. Low-income countries can borrow on concessional terms , which means there
3936-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
4100-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
4264-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
4428-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
4592-411: A visit by Xinjiang Communist Party Chief Zhang Chunxian , companies from Xinjiang signed $ 2 billion in additional agreements with their Pakistani counterparts, covering infrastructure, solar power, and logistics. The first convoy from China arrived in Gwadar on 13 November 2016, marking the formal commencement of CPEC operations. On 2 December 2016, the first cargo train departed from Yunnan , launching
4756-503: A year and is responsible for electing or appointing an executive director to the executive board. While the board of governors is officially responsible for approving quota increases, special drawing right allocations, the admittance of new members, compulsory withdrawal of members, and amendments to the Articles of Agreement and By-Laws, in practice it has delegated most of its powers to the IMF's executive board. The board of governors
4920-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
5084-641: Is a major financial agency of the United Nations , and an international financial institution funded by 190 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of last resort to national governments, and a leading supporter of exchange-rate stability . Its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade , promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around
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5248-933: Is a period of time with no interest rates, through the Extended Credit Facility (ECF), the Standby Credit Facility (SCF) and the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF). Non-concessional loans, which include interest rates, are provided mainly through the Stand-By Arrangements (SBA), the Flexible Credit Line (FCL), the Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL), and the Extended Fund Facility. The IMF provides emergency assistance via
5412-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
5576-519: Is divided into four sections: a 136-kilometer-long section between Karachi and Hyderabad, also known as the M9 motorway ; a 345-kilometer-long section between Hyderabad and Sukkur; a 392-kilometer-long section between Sukkur and Multan ; and a 333-kilometer section between Multan and Lahore via the town of Abdul Hakeem . The first section of the project provides high-speed road access from the Port of Karachi to
5740-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
5904-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
6068-400: Is seen as a central component of China's Belt and Road Initiative . At the start of the project, Pakistan assigned about 10,000 troops to protect Chinese investments, a number that increased to 15,000 active troops by 2016. On 12 August 2015, in the city of Karamay , China and Pakistan signed 20 additional agreements worth $ 1.6 billion to further expand the scale and scope of CPEC. Details of
6232-474: Is set to be constructed by private consortia to help alleviate Pakistan's chronic energy shortages, which regularly exceed 4,500 MW, and have reduced Pakistan's annual GDP by an estimated 2–2.5%. By the end of 2018, over 10,400 MW of generating capacity is expected to be brought online, with the majority developed as part of CPEC's fast-tracked "Early Harvest" projects . A network of pipelines for transporting liquefied natural gas and oil will also be laid, including
6396-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
6560-441: Is that private international capital markets function imperfectly and many countries have limited access to financial markets. Such market imperfections, together with balance-of-payments financing, provide the justification for official financing, without which many countries could only correct large external payment imbalances through measures with adverse economic consequences. The IMF provides alternate sources of financing such as
6724-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
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6888-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
7052-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
7216-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
7380-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
7544-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
7708-520: The COVID-19 pandemic . This was in addition to the $ 50 billion fund it had announced two weeks earlier, of which $ 5 billion had already been requested by Iran . One day earlier on 11 March, the UK called to pledge £150 million to the IMF catastrophe relief fund. It came to light on 27 March that "more than 80 poor and middle-income countries" had sought a bailout due to the coronavirus. On 13 April 2020,
7872-669: The China-Pakistan border , triggering massive landslides that dammed the Indus River and led to the formation of Attabad Lake . Portions of the Karakoram Highway were submerged by the lake, forcing all vehicular traffic onto barges to cross the newly formed reservoir. Construction on a 24-kilometer series of bridges and tunnels around Attabad Lake began in 2012 and took 36 months to complete. The bypass, consisting of two large bridges and five kilometers of tunnels,
8036-626: The Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in
8200-793: The Cold War limited the Fund's membership, with most countries in the Soviet sphere of influence not joining until 1970s and 1980s. The Bretton Woods exchange rate system prevailed until 1971 when the United States government suspended the convertibility of the US$ (and dollar reserves held by other governments) into gold. This is known as the Nixon Shock . The changes to the IMF articles of agreement reflecting these changes were ratified in 1976 by
8364-487: The Egyptian Ambassador to Pakistan expressed interest in CPEC cooperation. In January 2017, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa stated that he had received assurances from Chinese investment companies of up to $ 20 billion in investments for various projects. In March 2017, an agreement was signed for these projects, which include: a $ 1.5 billion oil refinery, $ 2 billion in irrigation projects,
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#17327732163328528-708: The Great Depression , countries sharply raised barriers to trade in an attempt to improve their failing economies. This led to the devaluation of national currencies and a decline in world trade. This breakdown in international monetary cooperation created a need for oversight. The representatives of 45 governments met at the Bretton Woods Conference in the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire , in
8692-675: The Indus , Soan , and Kurram Rivers. The total cost of the project was approximately $ 1.05 billion. At the southern terminus of the new Brahma Bahtar-Yarik Motorway, the N-50 National Highway will be upgraded between Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Zhob in Balochistan province, with future plans for reconstruction between Zhob and Quetta. The upgraded road will be a 4-lane dual-carriageway spanning
8856-494: The Jamaica Accords . Later in the 1970s, large commercial banks began lending to states because they were awash in cash deposited by oil exporters. The lending of the so-called money center banks led to the IMF changing its role in the 1980s after a world recession provoked a crisis that brought the IMF back into global financial governance. In the mid-1980s, the IMF shifted its narrow focus from currency stabilization to
9020-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
9184-685: The Makran Coastal Highway . These additional projects are estimated to cost $ 800 million and will be financed by 0% interest loans extended by the Exim Bank of China to Pakistan. In addition to the aforementioned infrastructure works, the Pakistani government announced in September 2015 its intention to establish a training institute named Pak-China Technical and Vocational Institute at Gwadar . This institute will be developed by
9348-547: The Marshall Plan , undertaken by the United States in the post-war Europe . Pakistani officials predict that CPEC will result in the creation of upwards of 2.3 million jobs between 2015 and 2030 and add 2 to 2.5 percentage points to the country's annual economic growth. As of 2022, it has enhanced Pakistan's export and development capacity and provided 1/4th of its total electricity. It is also seen as addressing
9512-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
9676-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
9840-493: The Pakistani government's Planning Commission , wrote, "The pattern is always the same. With the Fund's blessing, the government goes on a shopping spree, taking out costly loans for expensive projects, thus building up even more debt and adding new inefficiencies. After a few years, another crisis ensues, and it is met by another IMF program." The Pakistani establishment views Chinese loans as an alternative to IMF loans. Should
10004-562: The Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility . Upon the founding of the IMF, its three primary functions were: The IMF's role was fundamentally altered by the floating exchange rates after 1971. It shifted to examining the economic policies of countries with IMF loan agreements to determine whether a shortage of capital was due to economic fluctuations or economic policy. The IMF also researched what types of government policy would ensure economic recovery. A particular concern of
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#173277321633210168-830: The Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS). The executive board approved the SDDS and GDDS in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and subsequent amendments were published in a revised Guide to the General Data Dissemination System . The system is aimed primarily at statisticians and aims to improve many aspects of statistical systems in a country. It is also part of the World Bank Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers (PRSPs) . The primary objective of
10332-404: The Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia , which could be blockaded in case of war, thereby threatening China’s energy-dependent economy. Developing a deep-water port at Gwadar in the Arabian Sea and establishing a robust road and rail network from this port to the Xinjiang region in western China would serve as a shortcut, enhancing trade between Europe and China. In Pakistan,
10496-406: The first Greek bailout that totaled €110 billion, to address the great accumulation of public debt, caused by continuing large public sector deficits. As part of the bailout, the Greek government agreed to adopt austerity measures that would reduce the deficit from 11% in 2009 to "well below 3%" in 2014. The bailout did not include debt restructuring measures such as a haircut , to the chagrin of
10660-423: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
10824-542: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
10988-399: The $ 4 million Gwadar Smart Port City Master Plan, the $ 300 million Physical Infrastructure of Gwadar Port and the Free Zone Phase-1, and the $ 10 million Pak-China Technical and Vocational Institute. Meanwhile, a dozen projects worth nearly $ 2 billion, including water supply, electricity provision, expressways, an international airport, a fishing harbor, and a hospital, remain undeveloped. Over
11152-408: The $ 46 billion project, which is roughly 20% of Pakistan's annual GDP, with approximately $ 28 billion worth of fast-tracked "Early Harvest" projects to be developed by the end of 2018. Under CPEC, a vast network of highways and railways will be built across Pakistan. The government estimates that inefficiencies stemming from Pakistan's largely dilapidated transportation network cause a loss of 3.55% of
11316-679: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund ( IMF )
11480-415: The 1930s . The IMF formally came into existence on 27 December 1945, when the first 29 countries ratified its Articles of Agreement. By the end of 1946 the IMF had grown to 39 members. On 1 March 1947, the IMF began its financial operations, and on 8 May France became the first country to borrow from it. The IMF was one of the key organizations of the international economic system; its design allowed
11644-428: The 1940s and 1950s, and the recruitment of staff exposed to new thinking in economics. The IMF provided two major lending packages in the early 2000s to Argentina (during the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression ) and Uruguay (after the 2002 Uruguay banking crisis ). However, by the mid-2000s, IMF lending was at its lowest share of world GDP since the 1970s. In May 2010, the IMF participated, in 3:11 proportion, in
11808-584: The 205-kilometer distance between the two cities. The first portion of the N-50 to be upgraded is the 81-kilometer section between Zhob and Mughal Kot, with construction beginning in January 2016. This segment is expected to be completed by 2018 at a cost of $ 86 million. Although the project is a key component of CPEC's Western Alignment, its financing will come from the Asian Development Bank under
11972-531: The CPEC Authority for failing to attract investments and called for its dissolution. On 17 August 2022, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved, in principle, the abolition of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority, pending China's consent. Gwadar gained strategic importance after the Kargil War when Pakistan recognized the need for a military naval port, leading to the construction of
12136-413: The CPEC agreement by saying, "I feel as if I am going to visit the home of my brother," and claimed that the friendship between the two nations was "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, and sweeter than honey." China frequently uses terms like "iron brothers" and "all-weather friends" to describe its relationship with Pakistan. On 20 April 2015, Pakistan and China signed an agreement to commence work on
12300-430: The CPEC agreement, Gwadar Port will initially be expanded and upgraded to accommodate larger ships with a deadweight tonnage of up to 70,000. Improvement plans also include the construction of a $ 130 million breakwater around the port, as well as the construction of a floating liquefied natural gas facility that will have a capacity of 500 million cubic feet of liquefied natural gas per day and will be connected to
12464-522: The CPEC project; $ 6.1 billion has been allocated for constructing "Early Harvest" roadway projects at an interest rate of 1.6 percent. The remaining funds will be allocated when the Pakistani government awards contracts for road segments that are still in the planning phase. Three corridors have been identified for cargo transport: the Eastern Alignment through the heavily populated provinces of Sindh and Punjab, where most industries are located;
12628-675: The China-Pakistan border and the town of Burhan , near Hasan Abdal . At Burhan, the existing M1 motorway will intersect the N-35 at the Shah Maqsood Interchange. From there, access to Islamabad and Lahore continues via the M1 and M2 motorways. Burhan will also be at the intersection of the Eastern Alignment and Western Alignment . Upgrades to the 487-kilometer section between Burhan and Raikot are officially known as
12792-536: The Chinese border to Pakistan's deepwater ports on the Arabian Sea date back to the 1950s and motivated the construction of the Karakoram Highway beginning in 1959. Chinese interest in Pakistan's deep-water harbor at Gwadar was rekindled in 2002, leading to construction at Gwadar port, which was completed in 2006. Expansion of Gwadar Port then ceased due to political instability in Pakistan following
12956-481: The Chinese government announced its intention to finance Chinese companies as part of its $ 45.6 billion energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan as part of CPEC. Although China and Pakistan signed the official MoUs in 2015, the first details of the long-term plan under CPEC were publicly disclosed in 2017 when a Pakistani media outlet revealed access to the original documents. Chinese President Xi Jinping described his "fate-changing visit" to Pakistan for signing
13120-492: The Chinese government, which Pakistan will not be obliged to repay. The city of Gwadar is further being developed with the construction of a 300 MW coal power plant , a desalinization plant, and a new 300-bed hospital, which are to be completed in 2023. Plans for Gwadar also include the construction of the Gwadar East Bay Expressway – a 19-kilometer controlled-access road that will connect Gwadar Port to
13284-524: The Code of Conduct in the IMF Articles of Agreement, and to provide national economic information. However, stricter rules were imposed on governments that applied to the IMF for funding. The countries that joined the IMF between 1945 and 1971 agreed to keep their exchange rates secured at rates that could be adjusted only to correct a "fundamental disequilibrium" in the balance of payments, and only with
13448-402: The Eastern Alignment, a 1,152-kilometer-long motorway will connect Pakistan's two largest cities, Karachi and Lahore , with a 6-lane controlled access highway designed for travel speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour. The entire project will cost approximately $ 6.6 billion, with the bulk of financing provided by various Chinese state-owned banks. The entire Eastern Alignment motorway project
13612-467: The GDDS is to encourage member countries to build a framework to improve data quality and statistical capacity building to evaluate statistical needs, set priorities in improving timeliness, transparency , reliability, and accessibility of financial and economic data. Some countries initially used the GDDS, but later upgraded to SDDS. Some entities that are not IMF members also contribute statistical data to
13776-517: The Gwadar Port Authority at a cost of 943 million rupees, and is designed to impart the skills required to operate and work at the expanded Gwadar Port. As of 2017, there are a total of nine projects funded by China in and around Gwadar . Development of Gwadar includes the construction of a hospital funded by a Chinese government grant. The proposed project includes the building of medical blocks, nursing and paramedical institutes,
13940-785: The Gwadar-Nawabshah segment of the Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline . The expanded port is located near a 2,282-acre free trade area in Gwadar, which is being modeled on the lines of the Special Economic Zones of China . The land was handed to the China Overseas Port Holding Company in November 2015 as part of a 43-year lease. The site will include manufacturing zones, logistics hubs, warehouses, and display centers. Businesses located in
14104-471: The IMF in 1980 after losing the support of the then United States President Jimmy Carter and was replaced by the People's Republic of China . However, "Taiwan Province of China" is still listed in the official IMF indices. Poland withdrew in 1950—allegedly pressured by the Soviet Union —but returned in 1986. The former Czechoslovakia was expelled in 1954 for "failing to provide required data" and
14268-609: The IMF is Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva , who has held the post since 1 October 2019. Indian-American economist Gita Gopinath , previously the chief economist, was appointed as first deputy managing director, effective 21 January 2022. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas was appointed chief economist on 24 January 2022. According to the IMF itself, it works to foster global growth and economic stability by providing policy advice and financing to its members. It also works with developing countries to help them achieve macroeconomic stability and reduce poverty. The rationale for this
14432-425: The IMF is part, are joint managers of this programme, which was approved by the executive directors of the IMF on 15 March 2012 for XDR 23.8 billion and saw private bondholders take a haircut of upwards of 50%. In the interval between May 2010 and February 2012 the private banks of Holland, France, and Germany reduced exposure to Greek debt from €122 billion to €66 billion. As of January 2012 ,
14596-564: The IMF said that it "would provide immediate debt relief to 25 member countries under its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT)" programme. Not all member countries of the IMF are sovereign states, and therefore not all "member countries" of the IMF are members of the United Nations. Amidst "member countries" of the IMF that are not member states of the UN are non-sovereign areas with special jurisdictions that are officially under
14760-537: The IMF was to prevent financial crises, such as those in Mexico in 1982, Brazil in 1987, the 1997 Asian financial crisis , and the 1998 Russian financial crisis , from spreading and threatening the entire global financial and currency system. The challenge was to promote and implement a policy that reduced the frequency of crises among emerging market countries, especially the middle-income countries which are vulnerable to massive capital outflows. Rather than maintaining
14924-551: The IMF's agreement. Member countries of the IMF have access to information on the economic policies of all member countries, the opportunity to influence other members' economic policies, technical assistance in banking, fiscal affairs, and exchange matters, financial support in times of payment difficulties, and increased opportunities for trade and investment. The board of governors consists of one governor and one alternate governor for each member country. Each member country appoints its two governors. The Board normally meets once
15088-598: The Karachi-Gwadar Coastal Highway for defense purposes. Gwadar is central to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, envisioned as the link between China's ambitious One Belt, One Road initiative and its 21st Century Maritime Silk Road project. Over $ 1 billion worth of projects were planned around the port by December 2017. As of 2022, only three CPEC projects in Gwadar were declared completed:
15252-660: The Karakoram Highway Phase 2 project. At the southern end of the N-35, construction is underway for a 59-kilometer, 4-lane controlled-access highway between Burhan and Havelian , which will be officially named the E-35 expressway . North of Havelian, the next 66 kilometers will be upgraded to a 4-lane dual carriageway between Havelian and Shinkiari . Groundbreaking for this portion commenced in April 2016. The entire 354 kilometers of roadway north of Shinkiari, extending to Raikot near Chilas , will be constructed as
15416-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
15580-531: The Pakistani government is either planning or actively constructing several hydropower projects, including the Diamer-Bhasha Dam and Dasu Dam . Sections of the N-35 around these projects will be completely rebuilt in conjunction with the dam construction. In the meantime, this section of the N-35 is being upgraded from its current state until dam construction fully begins. Improvement projects on this section are expected to be completed by January 2017 at
15744-489: The Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to members facing urgent balance-of-payments needs. The IMF is mandated to oversee the international monetary and financial system and monitor the economic and financial policies of its member countries. Accurate estimations require a degree of participatory surveillance. Market sizes and economic facts are estimated using member-state data, shared and verifiable by
15908-538: The Swiss, Brazilian, Indian, Russian, and Argentinian Directors of the IMF, with the Greek authorities themselves (at the time, PM George Papandreou and Finance Minister Giorgos Papakonstantinou ) ruling out a haircut. A second bailout package of more than €100 billion was agreed upon over the course of a few months from October 2011, during which time Papandreou was forced from office. The so-called Troika , of which
16072-405: The United States, to discuss a framework for postwar international economic cooperation and how to rebuild Europe. There were two views on the role the IMF should assume as a global economic institution. American delegate Harry Dexter White foresaw an IMF that functioned more like a bank, making sure that borrowing states could repay their debts on time. Most of White's plan was incorporated into
16236-492: The Western Alignment through the less developed and more sparsely populated provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan; and the future Central Alignment, which will pass through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Balochistan. The CPEC projects involve reconstruction and upgrades to National Highway 35 (N-35), which forms the Pakistani section of the Karakoram Highway (KKH). The KKH spans the 887 kilometers between
16400-547: The city of Hyderabad and interior Sindh. Upgrade and construction work on this section, currently known as the Super Highway between Karachi and Hyderabad, began in March 2015 and aimed to convert the road into the 6-lane controlled access M9 Motorway, which was completed in approximately 30 months. In February 2017, a completed 75-kilometer stretch of the motorway was opened for public use by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. At
16564-420: The consequences of these policies for other countries and for the global economy . For instance, The IMF played a significant role in individual countries, such as Armenia and Belarus, in providing financial support to achieve stabilization financing from 2009 to 2019. The maximum sustainable debt level of a polity, which is watched closely by the IMF, was defined in 2011 by IMF economists to be 120%. Indeed, it
16728-519: The construction of Gwadar Port and the special economic zone. The special economic zone will be completed in three phases. By 2025, it is envisaged that manufacturing and processing industries will be developed, with further expansion of the zone intended to be completed by 2030. On 10 April 2016, Zhang Baozhong, chairman of China Overseas Port Holding Company, said in a conversation with The Washington Post that his company planned to spend $ 4.5 billion on roads, power, hotels, and other infrastructure for
16892-430: The construction of seven interchanges and 25 bridges over the Indus River and irrigation canals. The planned route of the motorway runs roughly parallel to the existing National Highway and Indus Highway in various sections. In July 2016, the Pakistani government announced that the project would be open to international bidders on a build-operate-transfer basis , with Chinese and South Korean companies expressing interest in
17056-452: The country will be able to rectify its macroeconomic and structural imbalances. In the judgment of the IMF, the adoption by the member of certain corrective measures or policies will allow it to repay the IMF, thereby ensuring that the resources will be available to support other members. As of 2004 , borrowing countries have had a good track record for repaying credit extended under the IMF's regular lending facilities with full interest over
17220-936: The country's annual GDP. Modern transportation networks built under CPEC will link seaports in Gwadar and Karachi with northern Pakistan, as well as points further north in western China and Central Asia . A 1,100-kilometre-long motorway will be built between the cities of Karachi and Lahore , while the Karakoram Highway from Hasan Abdal to the Chinese border will be completely reconstructed and overhauled. The currently stalled Karachi–Peshawar main railway line will also be upgraded to allow for train travel at up to 160 km per hour by December 2019. Pakistan's railway network will also be extended to eventually connect to China's Southern Xinjiang Railway in Kashgar . The estimated $ 11 billion required to modernize transportation networks will be financed by subsidized concessionary loans . Over $ 33 billion worth of energy infrastructure
17384-418: The detriment of others because they do not bear the full consequences of their actions—is mitigated through conditions rather than providing collateral; countries in need of IMF loans do not generally possess internationally valuable collateral anyway. Conditionality also reassures the IMF that the funds lent to them will be used for the purposes defined by the Articles of Agreement and provides safeguards that
17548-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
17712-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
17876-742: The direct rail and sea freight service between China and Pakistan. The train, loaded with 500 tonnes of commodities, left Kunming for the port city of Guangzhou , where the cargo was transferred to ships for transport to Karachi , thereby opening the new route. The new rail and sea freight service is expected to reduce logistics costs, including transportation, by 50 percent. In November 2016, China announced an additional $ 8.5 billion investment in Pakistan, with $ 4.5 billion allocated to upgrading Pakistan's main railway line from Karachi to Peshawar, including improvements to tracks, speed, and signaling, and $ 4 billion directed towards an LNG terminal and transmission lines to alleviate energy shortages. In February 2017,
18040-539: The disbursement of funds from the Government of the People's Republic of China were not granted until May 2016. Ninety percent of the project's cost is being financed through concessionary loans from China, with the remaining 10% funded by the Government of Pakistan. The construction of this segment is expected to take 36 months. Construction of the section between Multan and Lahore , costing approximately $ 1.5 billion,
18204-438: The duration of the loan. This indicates that IMF lending does not impose a burden on creditor countries, as lending countries receive market-rate interest on most of their quota subscription, plus any of their own-currency subscriptions that are loaned out by the IMF, plus all of the reserve assets that they provide the IMF. The IMF was originally laid out as a part of the Bretton Woods system exchange agreement in 1944. During
18368-509: The end of March 2014, the IMF secured an $ 18 billion bailout fund for the provisional government of Ukraine in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity . In late 2019, the IMF estimated global growth in 2020 to reach 3.4%, but due to the coronavirus, in November 2020, it expected the global economy to shrink by 4.4%. In March 2020, Kristalina Georgieva announced that the IMF stood ready to mobilize $ 1 trillion as its response to
18532-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
18696-454: The fall of General Pervez Musharraf and the subsequent conflict between the Pakistani state and Taliban militants. Since the early 1990s, the IMF has provided more than a dozen bailouts to Pakistan to save its dwindling economy, which has struggled for 22 of the past 30 years to meet the austerity measures demanded by the IMF. Nadeem-ul-Haque, a former IMF official and former deputy chairman of
18860-455: The final acts adopted at Bretton Woods. British economist John Maynard Keynes , on the other hand, imagined that the IMF would be a cooperative fund upon which member states could draw to maintain economic activity and employment through periodic crises. This view suggested an IMF that helped governments and act as the United States government had during the New Deal to the great depression of
19024-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
19188-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
19352-422: The form of policy reform. If the conditions are not met, the funds are withheld. The concept of conditionality was introduced in a 1952 executive board decision and later incorporated into the Articles of Agreement. Conditionality is associated with economic theory as well as an enforcement mechanism for repayment. Stemming primarily from the work of Jacques Polak , the theoretical underpinning of conditionality
19516-565: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
19680-403: The industrial zone, as well as other projects in Gwadar city. China will grant Pakistan $ 230 million to construct a new international airport in Gwadar. The provincial government of Balochistan has set aside 4,000 acres for the construction of the new $ 230 million Gwadar International Airport , which will require an estimated 30 months for completion. The costs will be fully funded by grants from
19844-408: The initial $ 46 billion worth of projects be implemented, their value would be roughly equivalent to all foreign direct investment in Pakistan since 1970, and would be equal to 17% of Pakistan's 2015 gross domestic product. In 2013, then Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang decided to further enhance mutual connectivity. A memorandum of understanding on cooperation for
20008-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
20172-544: The largest borrowers from the IMF in order were Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, and Ukraine. On 25 March 2013, a €10 billion international bailout of Cyprus was agreed by the Troika , at the cost to the Cypriots of its agreement: to close the country's second-largest bank ; to impose a one-time bank deposit levy on Bank of Cyprus uninsured deposits. No insured deposit of €100k or less were to be affected under
20336-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
20500-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
20664-416: The motorway. The CPEC project plans to expand and upgrade the road network in the Pakistani provinces of Balochistan , Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , and western Punjab Province as part of the Western Alignment. This project will upgrade several hundred kilometers of road into 2 and 4-lane divided highways by mid-2018, with land acquisition allowing for future upgrades to a 6-lane motorway. The CPEC project includes
20828-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
20992-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
21156-531: The new 285-kilometer controlled-access Brahma Bahtar-Yarik Motorway will begin. The motorway will terminate near the town of Yarik , just north of Dera Ismail Khan . Groundbreaking for the project occurred on 17 May 2016, and it was inaugurated on 5 January 2022. The motorway crosses the Sindh Sagar Doab region and the Indus River at Mianwali before entering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It includes 11 interchanges, 74 culverts, and 3 major bridges over
21320-428: The organization's conditional loans. During the 20th century, the IMF shifted its position on capital controls. Whereas the IMF permitted capital controls at its founding and throughout the 1970s, IMF staff increasingly favored free capital movement from 1980s onwards. This shift happened in the aftermath of an emerging consensus in economics on the desirability of free capital movement, retirement of IMF staff hired in
21484-491: The organization's other member-states. This transparency is intended to facilitate international co-operation and trade. Since the demise of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in the early 1970s, surveillance has evolved largely by way of changes in procedures rather than through the adoption of new obligations. The Fund typically analyses the appropriateness of each member country's economic and financial policies for achieving orderly economic growth, and assesses
21648-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
21812-553: The past two years, China has provided 7,000 solar panel sets to households in Gwadar. An additional 10,000 sets are being prepared for distribution to underprivileged communities in Balochistan . The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan is also set to donate household solar units and other forms of assistance to the people of Balochistan. Initial infrastructure works at Gwadar Port commenced in 2002 and were completed in 2007, however plans to upgrade and expand Gwadar 's port stalled. Under
21976-677: The plan remain opaque, but it is reported to mainly focus on increasing energy generation capacity. As part of the agreement, Pakistan and China have also agreed to cooperate in the field of space research . In September and October 2015, the United Kingdom announced two separate grants to Pakistan for the construction of roadways complementary to CPEC. In November 2015, China incorporated CPEC into its 13th Five-Year Development Plan, and in December 2015, China and Pakistan agreed on an additional $ 1.5 billion investment to establish an information and technology park as part of CPEC. On 8 April 2016, during
22140-459: The project aims to address electricity shortages, develop infrastructure, and modernize transportation networks, while also transitioning the economy from an agriculture-based structure to an industrial one. CPEC is seen as the main plank of China's Belt and Road Initiative , and as of early 2024, is the BRI's most developed land corridor. CPEC's potential impact on Pakistan has been compared to that of
22304-490: The project. The 392-kilometer Sukkur to Multan section of the motorway is estimated to cost $ 2.89 billion. Construction on this section began on 6 May 2016 and was completed in September 2019. The road is a six-lane controlled-access highway featuring 11 interchanges, 10 rest facilities, 492 underpasses, and 54 bridges along its route. In January 2016, the Pakistani government awarded the construction contract to China State Construction Engineering . However, final approvals for
22468-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
22632-557: The reconstruction of 870 kilometers of road in Balochistan province alone, of which 620 kilometers had already been rebuilt by January 2016. The Western Alignment roadway network will start at the Barahma Bahtar Interchange on the M1 Motorway near the towns of Burhan and Hasan Abdal in northern Punjab province. The newly reconstructed Karakoram Highway will connect to the Western Alignment at Burhan, where
22796-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
22960-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
23124-605: The revival of the Silk Road . CPEC envisages rapidly upgrading Pakistan's infrastructure and thereby strengthening its economy by constructing modern transportation networks, numerous energy projects, and special economic zones . The potential industries being set up in the CPEC special economic zones include food processing, cooking oil, ceramics, gems and jewelry, marble, minerals, agriculture machinery, iron and steel, motorbike assembling, electrical appliances, and automobiles. Since 2021, due to growing pressure on China for being
23288-453: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
23452-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
23616-409: The sovereignty of full UN member states, such as Aruba , Curaçao , Hong Kong , and Macao , as well as Kosovo . The corporate members appoint ex-officio voting members, who are listed below . All members of the IMF are also International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) members and vice versa. Former members are Cuba (which left in 1964), and Taiwan , which was ejected from
23780-416: The system to balance the rebuilding of international capitalism with the maximization of national economic sovereignty and human welfare, also known as embedded liberalism . The IMF's influence in the global economy steadily increased as it accumulated more members. Its membership began to expand in the late 1950s and during the 1960s as many African countries became independent and applied for membership. But
23944-455: The systems: A 2021 study found that the IMF's surveillance activities have "a substantial impact on sovereign debt with much greater impacts in emerging than high-income economies". IMF conditionality is a set of policies or conditions that the IMF requires in exchange for financial resources. The IMF does require collateral from countries for loans but also requires the government seeking assistance to correct its macroeconomic imbalances in
24108-634: The terminus of the M9 motorway in Hyderabad, the Karachi-Lahore Motorway will continue to Sukkur as a six-lane controlled-access motorway, also known as the M6 motorway . This section will be 345 kilometers long and is projected to cost $ 1.7 billion. It will provide high-speed road access to interior Sindh, particularly near the towns of Matiari , Nawabshah , and Khairpur . The project will require
24272-545: The terms of a novel bail-in scheme. The topic of sovereign debt restructuring was taken up by the IMF in April 2013, for the first time since 2005, in a report entitled "Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Recent Developments and Implications for the Fund's Legal and Policy Framework". The paper, which was discussed by the board on 20 May, summarised the recent experiences in Greece, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Jamaica. An explanatory interview with deputy director Hugh Bredenkamp
24436-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
24600-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
24764-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
24928-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
25092-476: The world's biggest polluter, it has shifted its focus from coal-based energy investments in Pakistan to renewables . This shift is intended to promote a "greener" image of CPEC. In June 2022, the Karot Hydropower Project began commercial operations to provide cheap, clean electricity and aims to reduce 3.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually. Plans for a corridor stretching from
25256-464: The world." Established in July of 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference , primarily according to the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes , it started with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system after World War II . In its early years, the IMF primarily focused on facilitating fixed exchange rates across the developed world. It now plays
25420-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
25584-502: The zone will be exempt from customs authorities as well as many provincial and federal taxes. Businesses established in the special economic zone will be exempt from Pakistani income, sales, and federal excise taxes for 23 years. Contractors and subcontractors associated with China Overseas Port Holding Company will be exempt from such taxes for 20 years, while a 40-year tax holiday will be granted for imports of equipment, materials, plant/machinery, appliances, and accessories that are used for
25748-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
25912-608: Was at this number that the Greek government-debt crisis started in 2010. In 1995, the International Monetary Fund began to work on data dissemination standards with the view of guiding IMF member countries to disseminate their economic and financial data to the public. The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) endorsed the guidelines for the dissemination standards and they were split into two tiers: The General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) and
26076-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
26240-776: Was launched in November 2015. The project is a joint venture between the China Railway Construction Corporation Limited and Pakistan's Zahir Khan and Brothers Engineers. The total length of this motorway section is 333 kilometers; however, the first 102 kilometers of the road between Khanewal and Abdul Hakeem is part of the M4 Motorway and is being funded by the Asian Development Bank . The remaining 231 kilometers between Abdul Hakeem and Lahore, currently under construction as part of CPEC, will complete this section of
26404-431: Was opened to the public on 14 September 2015 at a cost of $ 275 million. Additionally, the 175-kilometer road between Gilgit and Skardu will be upgraded to a 4-lane road at a cost of $ 475 million to provide direct access to Skardu from the N-35. The term "Eastern Alignment" of CPEC refers to roadway projects located in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab , some of which were first envisioned in 1991. As part of
26568-488: Was published a few days later, as was a deconstruction by Matina Stevis of The Wall Street Journal . In the October 2013, Fiscal Monitor publication, the IMF suggested that a capital levy capable of reducing Euro-area government debt ratios to "end-2007 levels" would require a very high tax rate of about 10%. The Fiscal Affairs department of the IMF, headed at the time by Acting Director Sanjeev Gupta, produced
26732-590: Was readmitted in 1990, after the Velvet Revolution . Apart from Cuba, the other UN states that do not belong to the IMF are Monaco and North Korea . Liechtenstein became the 191st member on 21 October 2024. Any country may apply to be a part of the IMF. Post-IMF formation, in the early postwar period, rules for IMF membership were left relatively loose. Members needed to make periodic membership payments towards their quota, to refrain from currency restrictions unless granted IMF permission, to abide by
26896-584: Was the "monetary approach to the balance of payments". Some of the conditions for structural adjustment can include: These conditions are known as the Washington Consensus . These loan conditions ensure that the borrowing country will be able to repay the IMF and that the country will not attempt to solve their balance-of-payment problems in a way that would negatively impact the international economy . The incentive problem of moral hazard —when economic agents maximise their own utility to
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