Chinese President Xi Jinping will launch energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion on a visit to Pakistan next week as China cements links with its old ally and generates opportunities for firms hit by slack growth at home.

Also being finalised is a long-discussed plan to sell Pakistan eight Chinese submarines. The deal, worth between $4 billion and $5 billion, according to media reports, may be among those signed on the trip.

Commercial and defense ties are drawing together the two countries, which share a remote border and long-standing mistrust of their increasingly powerful neighbor, India, and many Western nations.

“China treats us as a friend, an ally, a partner and above all an equal – not how the Americans and others do,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistan parliament’s defense committee.

Pakistan and China often boast of being “iron brothers” and two-way trade grew to $10 billion last year from $4 billion in 2007, Pakistani data shows.

Xi’s trip is expected to focus on a Pakistan-China Economic Corridor, a planned $46-billion network of roads, railways and energy projects linking Pakistan’s deepwater Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea with China’s far-western Xinjiang region.

It would shorten the route for China’s energy imports, bypassing the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, a bottleneck at risk of blockade in wartime.  If the submarine deal is signed, China may also offer Pakistan concessions on building a refueling and mechanical station in Gwadar, a defense analyst said.

China’s own submarines could use the station to extend their range in the Indian Ocean.  “China is thinking in terms of a maritime silk road now, something to connect the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean,” said a Pakistani defense official, who declined to be identified.

For Pakistan, the corridor is a cheap way to develop its violence-plagued and poverty-stricken Baluchistan province, home to Gwadar.

China has promised to invest about $34 billion in energy projects and nearly $12 billion in infrastructure.

Xi is also likely to raise fears that Muslim separatists from Xinjiang are linking up with Pakistani militants, and he could also push for closer efforts for a more stable Afghanistan.  “One of China’s top priorities on this trip will be to discuss Xinjiang,” said a Western diplomat in Beijing. “China is very worried about the security situation there.”

Jamila Trindle writes: The Russian ruble is rebounding, outpacing all other world currencies against the dollar this year. The 20 percent recovery this month alone stands in stark contrast to last year, when U.S. officials smugly pointed to Russia’s plummeting currency as proof that Western sanctions against Moscow for meddling in Ukraine were working.

That doesn’t mean the sanctions no longer have teeth. But it does add another complication to Western leaders’ already difficult task of trying to forge a lasting peace in Ukraine.

Some analysts have ascribed the ruble’s upward march to the tenuous cease-fire agreement reached between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in February. Rising oil prices could be giving the ruble a boost, since the Russian government is dependent on money coming in from the country’s state energy giants. And yet another theory is that the ruble is not really strengthening, but just recovering to a reasonable level after plummeting too far last year.

The dramatic turnaround has prompted some investors to scramble to get back in. Bond investors, who had steered clear of Russia, are now returning in droves.

Some cautione against viewing the success of sanctions or Russia’s economy through only its currency.

While the appreciating ruble is welcome news for Russians who want to travel abroad and buy foreign goods, it may not be the sign of brighter days quite yet for the overall economy.

While oil prices have recovered somewhat, they’re still far away from the $100 a barrel that the Russian government budgeted for last year, or even the $70 a barrel Siluanov said they were hoping for this year. Russian oil sells at a slight discount to Brent crude, which traded around $58 a barrell.

European leaders struggle to hold together the fragile consensus on sanctions against Moscow, the ruble surge is giving some parts of the Russian economy a shot in the arm. Companies that borrowed in dollars, for instance, are likely breathing a sigh of relief, as their debts deflated a little bit as the ruble strengthened.

But whether or not it continues, the currency rally is unlikely to be enough to save the Russian economy, or Putin, from another round of sanctions.

The growth rate in China was lower than the 7.3% posted for the three months to December.  Last year, China’s economy, which is the world’s second largest, grew at its slowest pace since 1990.

It expanded by 7.4% in 2014, missing its annual growth target of 7.5% for the first time in 15 years.  Despite the slowdown, the Chinese economy was still one of the world’s fastest-growing and analysts have said it was proving to be more resilient than expected.

However, they have also said that slower growth, together with the country’s cooling property market – a key economic driver – was likely to mean further easing by China’s central bank this year, including further rate cuts among other measures.

In February the People’s Bank of China unexpectedly cut interest rates for the second time since last November.  Interest rate cuts together with injections of liquidity are some of the tools Beijing uses to fine tune its economic growth.

The European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager has filed a complaint against Google that alleged the company violated anti-trust laws. The complaint stated that the company’s promotion of its own shopping links amounted to an abuse of its search dominance. (Google accounts for 90 percent of web searches in the EU.) The company has 10 weeks to respond.

The complaint follows a years-long investigation into Google’s practices. Since 2010, a number of companies, including Microsoft, Tripadvisor, and Streetmap, have leveled anti-trust allegations.

Google rejected the claim that it had acted inappropriately. “While Google may be the most used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways,” wrote its search chief Amit Singhal. “[A]llegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide of the mark.”

The legal process could carry on for years and ultimately lead to billions of euros in fines.

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