Key takeaways
- China's curbs on processing technology push Pakistan to diversify its mineral partners.
- Reko Diq, antimony, nickel and rare earths remain largely undeveloped assets.
- US know-how and Saudi capital can complement, not simply replace, Chinese partnership.
- Security-led, centralised mineral governance risks feeding grievances in Balochistan.
- A federal-provincial minerals compact with transparent royalties is the precondition for investment.
In this Paradigm Shift column (February 2026), Dr. Ghulam Mohey-ud-din argues that the scramble for critical minerals gives Pakistan a rare opening: to become a multi-partner mineral economy instead of a quarry for others. Whether it takes that opening depends less on geology than on processing capacity, partnership strategy and governance.
The argument
China’s new restrictions on exporting mineral-processing technology and specialised tooling expose how dependent Pakistan’s extraction plans have been on a single partner. Meanwhile the country’s endowment, from the Reko Diq copper-gold deposit to antimony, nickel and rare earths in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is still mostly in the ground.
The column sets out three enabling pillars that China used to supply as a package: processing technology, patient capital and security. American partners can bring processing knowledge and market access; Saudi Arabia can bring capital and guaranteed demand from its own industrialisation. The aim is to spread dependency across several partners, not to swap one patron for another.
The author warns against the growing securitisation of mineral governance through military organisations and the Special Investment Facilitation Council. Centralised, exclusionary control in a politically sensitive province can hand insurgents a grievance. A minerals corridor linking Afghan reserves to Pakistani refineries could reshape regional trade, but it would also collide with Chinese and Iranian corridor interests.
What needs to change
- A federal-provincial minerals compact with clear royalty shares, community development funds and published revenues.
- A graded value-addition strategy that works with American, Saudi, European, Japanese and, selectively, Chinese partners.
- Separating security operations from political management, so that local grievances are addressed rather than policed.
The conclusion: minerals can anchor a new economic model only if Balochistan’s people see the benefits and investors see predictable rules.