BEIJING: Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a ‘historic meeting’ on Sunday at the Great Hall of People in Beijing.
While the two leaders reviewed the entire gamut of Pakistan-China bilateral cooperation, with PM Imran congratulating China on the successful hosting of the 24th Olympic Winter Games, the meeting was also marked by the two leaders joining hands to commemorate the ‘founding fathers of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’.
Pakistani man Ali Nadeem and Chinese woman Chung Su-Lee are credited with conceiving the idea of CPEC in 1978, and Imran and Xi duly inaugurated a memorabilia in the shape of a large image of the duo, which is to be displayed in the Great Hall of People.
“I would like to pay tribute to CPEC’s founding fathers, without whom creating the region’s game-changer would not have been possible. We will also display their image in the Pakistani Parliament, which will be inaugurated by President Xi,” PM Khan said during the inauguration ceremony.
Ali Nadeem and Chung Su-Lee first met in 1977 at an adult education college in London, where they studied English as a Foreign Language, a course taught to foreign students by renowned teacher Jeremy Brown.
After a year of learning English together Ali Nadeem, a salesman originating from Lahore, and Chung Su-Lee, a loyalist of the Communist Party of China and a follower of Mao Zedong, grew closer and decided to marry each other.
While the marriage did not take place due to legal complications, the two combined their financial, communist, and Islamic know-how to conceive the idea of a corridor that would bind China and Pakistan together in eternal matrimony.
“People of the two countries should never forget that idea of China Pakistan Economic Corridor was conceived in a British language school corridor,” Federal Minister for Information and Broadcast Fawad Chaudhry said while talking to The Dependent.
