Public views are essential, particularly when it comes to large-scale development initiatives like CPEC, which have the potential to change the socioeconomic and political climate of a nation comprised of more than 200 million individuals. This paper focuses on the perceptions of CPEC among the media in a virtual world. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of media handling, that is, the positive or negative image of CPEC. The media reports gathered indicate that the majority of Pakistanis consider CPEC a valuable project for Pakistan and regard China as a more reliable, friendly nation than the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran (Awais et al., 2019). However, there are dissenting views readily floating in the country regarding the nature of Pak-China relations, where the media also refers to the amity between China and Pakistan as being "interest-based." It suggests that the educated Pakistani public's support for China is motivated by pragmatism rather than sentiment and that the states' claim that their relationship is "sweeter than honey, higher than the mountains" should be considered pragmatically. The development of the project's perception management strategy for the two concerned nations will benefit from an analysis of how this project is perceived on social media by various societal groups (Akhtar et al., 2021)
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