Pak-China Ties Keep Growing Firmly
Pakistan and China signed seven
agreements on December 15, 2004 strengthening their
ties in the fields of energy, communications, trade
and some other socio-economic sectors. Also, they
drew up a framework for enhanced economic cooperation.
The accords were concluded during Prime Minister
Shaukat Aziz’s visit to Beijing and his meetings
with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, and other
senior officials. He met President Hu Jubao also.
The accords envisage a substantial increase in bilateral
trade, further progress on the Preferential Trade
Agreement, setting up of joint agro-based industries
in the Export Processing Zones of Pakistan, and
increased investment of China in Pakistan.
There is a lot of pent up money in China from its
exports to the US and the European Union. It has
currently an annual trade surplus of $150 billion
with the US and holds US treasury bonds of over
$175 billion, next only to Japan. With the recent
decline in the exchange value of the US dollar,
it may be exploring other avenues of investment.
Pakistan, a stable and reliable friend, offers prospects
that cannot be ignored.
Taking a long-term view, China has already built
an all-weather, across the Himalayan range, the
Karakoram highway (KKH), often referred to as the
eighth wonder of the world, and is now finishing
construction on the Gwader deep sea port on the
coast of Pakistan west of Karachi. A road between
KKH and Gwader would provide a closer port for the
export of products of Chinese factories to be located
in Western China. Gwader’s strategic value
is of no less significance. It gives China access
and basing facilities in the Indian Ocean and in
close proximity to the Straits of Hormuz.
With a growth rate of over 9 per cent for the past
quarter of a century and an unmatched high rate
of investment, China has already lifted 300 million
people from out of poverty and has already reached
a level in food production that it will become an
international donor under the World Food Program
instead of a recipient that it had been for 25 years.
The KKH stands as a monument to Pak-China friendship.
The Heavy Mechanical Complex, the Rebuild Factory,
the Chashma Nuclear Power Plant, and the Makran
Coastal Highway now nearing completion, are some
of the other monuments. A Chinese company is currently
engaged in raising the level of Mangla Dam to enhance
its storage capacity. China is providing 160 bogeys
and 69 engines to help in the modernization of Pak
railways. Also, it is improving the signaling and
track systems.
Strategic cooperation between the two countries
has been exemplary.
A section of the world media, inimical to Pakistan,
had commenced predicting that as a consequence of
the 9/11 tragedy and the willingness of Pakistan
to be embraced by the US, the close strategic cooperation
between Pakistan and China would get diluted, and
political and economic ties would lose their glitter.
Events have proved wrong all such predictions. There
is no discernible shift in the friendly, mutually
beneficial and trustful relations between the two.
The Pakistan-China strategic alliance did not emerge
as a matter of convenience. Strategic compulsions
led to it, and strategic convergences continue to
exist. It was not born from Cold War compulsions.
It would therefore continue to be the cornerstone
of Pakistan’s foreign and strategic policies.
China is perceived in Pakistan as a bulwark against
an over-domineering United States. The US military
assistance to Pakistan is perceived, rightly or
wrongly, as the instigator for periodic military
take-over of the country by an army considered to
be subservient to American interests.
The people at large view the Chinese as their true
and sincere friends. The Chinese have meticulously
avoided any action likely to offend the people’s
susceptibilities. China’s political strength
is regarded as an assurance of stability in Asia.
It has eschewed domination and pursued vehemently
the promotion of a peaceful environment in its neighborhood.
It has therefore settled its borders with almost
all its neighbors.
Pakistan’s desire for maximum balance and
diversification in its external relations has led
it to close relations with China. It has been a
valuable geopolitical connection. In 1950 Pakistan
recognized the new People’s Republic of China.
It was the third non-communist state and the first
Muslim country to do so.
The Sino-Indian border clash of 1962 provided new
opportunities for Pakistan’s relations with
China. The two countries demarcated their border
and agreed to build the KKH. Pakistan’s China
connection enabled it to facilitate the 1971 visit
of Henry Kissinger to that country. In the 1980s
China and the US supplied military and economic
assistance through Pakistan to the Afghan freedom
fighters.
The Chinese, it is relevant to point out here, are
an introvert, narcissist people. They built the
Great Wall to keep the ‘uncultured, foreign
barbarians’ out of their ‘great middle
kingdom’. Their patriotism is rooted in a
long, humiliating century in which foreign imperialists
carved out spheres of influence and reduced the
highly advanced society to the status of ‘sick
man of Asia’ or in the words of Sun Yat-sen,
the first great Chinese leader of modern era, to
‘a sheet of loose sand’.
The introvert Chinese seldom considered it dignified
to cross swords with any foreign ‘barbarian’
power. Hence, they did not build a worthwhile navy
and were therefore beaten by the British in the
opium war of mid-nineteenth century. Coming out
of the opium-induced stupor after independence in
1949, they experimented with a foreign ideology
-Communism- and shifted to market economy after
the demise of Mao in 1976 without totally abandoning
the centrally controlled system. The mix of the
two has enabled China to produce various manufactured
goods at export prices that cannot be beaten by
manufacturers elsewhere. It has within a couple
of decades emerged as the manufacturing floor of
the world.
Pakistan, on the other hand, is still suffering
from the fallout of the Afghan war. It emerged from
it as an economically emaciated and socially retarded
country inflicted with a Klashnikov culture, addicted
to easy money from heroin and smuggling, and an
erosion of respect for law. Many young men bid farewell
to books and picked up arms to fight the Soviet
infidels. These freedom fighters were pampered by
the US and other Western intelligence agencies and
trained in guerrilla warfare. They are decidedly
the products of the Afghan war; so are the Taliban.
Pakistan can benefit a lot by learning from the
Chinese as to how to develop a national consensus,
have their priorities right, and how to subordinate
political leaders’ personal ambitions, partisan
priorities or the interests of the man in uniform
to national dictates.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com 714-921-9634. December
17, 2004
