Pakistans China Syndrome
At the height of Pakistans crisis in relations with the United States,
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani reminded his Chinese guest of the words he had used to describe its relationship with China. Pak-China friendship is higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey. In a press release issued by the prime ministers office during a visit to Islamabad by Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu, Gilani also promised China that
your friends are our friends, your enemies are our enemies and your security is our security.
It was language designed to show that even after Admiral Mike Mullens assertion that the Afghan militant Haqqani network was effectively a proxy of the Pakistan army, China Pakistans all weather friend stood at its side. The Pakistan media enthusiastically played up Mengs visit, jumping on a relatively small offer of financial help and a dreamed-of defence pact with China to build up hopes of Chinese support.
Faced with such hyperbole, I flipped across to the website of the
Peoples Daily to see what it had to say about Pakistan. At the time I looked, there was no mention of Pakistan. It did however give prominence to a story about China and India holding a strategic dialogue to build economic ties.
The comparison is instructive in so many ways.
First of all Pakistan is not the centre of the world even though those of us who cover it tend to think it is. And China is a big country, setting itself on a trajectory to outstrip the United States. It pays far less attention to India than India does to China, let alone becoming as obsessed with Pakistans problems as Pakistan is with casting China in the role of saviour.
Secondly,
Pakistan has consistently over-estimated the support it is likely to get from China for decades. As far back as its 1965 war with India launched in a failed bid to wrest control of Kashmir it misjudged Chinas willingness to intervene on its behalf. At the time, Pakistan-China relations were riding high. China had just inflicted a humiliating defeat on India in a 1962 border war. Pakistan had then in Indian eyes added insult to injury by reaching a provisional border agreement with China and agreeing to build the strategic Karakoram Highway to link it properly to Indias enemy. Yet
during the 1965 war, Pakistans expectations of Chinese help were proved disastrously wrong.
At the time of the 1971 war with India a crisis bigger than the one faced by Pakistan today China gave no military support when Pakistan was split in two with Indian backing to carve out the new country of Bangladesh. The United States gave little real help, either, beyond deploying the 7th Fleet to the Bay of Bengal - something that is bitterly remembered by Pakistan but somehow Chinas own record was forgotten.
Indeed history is so stacked up in favour of the argument that
Pakistan has consistently over-estimated its likely support from China that it is hard to believe the Pakistan government does not know this already. If it had any doubts it would have cleared these up when the government first sought Chinese financial help in 2008 only to be rebuffed and sent packing to the IMF - a decision which left Pakistan more vulnerable to U.S. influence.
And even without the historical evidence, it would be clear that
Chinas concerns about Pakistan-based Islamist militants focused on its own Xinjiang province would mean that Beijing would be unlikely to come out all guns blazing in defence of Pakistans right to tolerate or support groups like the Haqqani network. China is also steadily building economic relations with India which if anything is even more sensitive than the United States to any hint of tolerance for militant groups by Pakistan or its allies.
In other words, it is reasonable to assume the
Pakistan government knows full well that there are limits to Chinese support in its confrontation with the United States. And that by extension its higher than mountains, deeper than oceans talk is designed for a domestic audience.
And this is where it gets even more interesting. What does the governments public language about China tell us about Pakistan and particularly its civilian-military relations?
Step back for a moment and consider that Mullens comments have created a huge nationalistic backlash in Pakistan. Whether by design or default, the biggest beneficiary of this backlash is the Pakistan army as the one institution which can defend the country against any American military attack. (Watch this war video clip from Pakistan television celebrating the prowess of Pakistans armed forces to see how the American threats are being played domestically.)
The civilian government has never been able to wrest control over foreign and security policy from the Pakistan army. It had an opportunity after the raid by U.S. forces who found and killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 a raid which deeply embarrassed the Pakistan army but did not do so.
With the latest crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations, English-language newspapers have suggested that the civilian government again seize the opportunity to assert its authority taking advantage of a multi-party conference called by Prime Minister Gilani for Sept. 29 to discuss the situation.
If the events of May 2 did not result in attempts to increase civilian oversight, surely elected representatives should seize Pakistan s current embarrassment and the economic and security risk it presents as an opportunity to try to correct the balance of power, Dawn newspaper wrote in an editorial.
The Express Tribune suggested the civilian government was trying to find a more sensible and pragmatic approach than the military, showing the existence of two centres of power at work in the country. While the Pakistan army stands accused by the Americans of running the Haqqani network as a proxy an allegation it denies when the all-party conference is held, hopefully the participants will realise that it is not in Pakistans interest to allow terrorists safe havens on its soil or allow such elements to launch attacks on other countries from inside Pakistan, it said.
So what would a civilian government seeking to assert its influence over foreign policy and adopt a more pragmatic approach do?
1) Encourage the hawks, the populists and jingoists, and the anti-American right by insisting that Pakistan has a superpower ally of its own which will defend it down to the deepest ocean and up to the highest mountain? 2) Avoid hyperbole in the interests of convincing the people of Pakistan of the limits of Chinese support and the need to work somehow with the United States?
The visit by Chinas Meng probably told us more than we realise. It did not tell us very much about what China will do if past history is anything to go by it will do very little and try to keep itself out of the fray. But it did tell us rather a lot about Pakistan and the likelihood of the countrys civilian and military leaders closing ranks in the face of American pressure.[
China's Pakistan Conundrum:The End of the All-Weather Friendship
China is often called an "all-weather friend" to Pakistan -- a strategic partner, a reliable source of trade and aid, and Islamabad's closest military ally. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani has described the friendship between the two countries as "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, and sweeter than honey." In September, he told the visiting Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu, "Your friends are our friends," continuing, "your enemies are our enemies, and your security is our security."
But do things look so straightforward when viewed from Beijing? To be sure, Chinese money pours into places Western cash fears to tread. But Beijing is not oblivious to risk. In fact, Chinese money flows disproportionately to investments that carry little to no risk and deliver returns that, however modest, are predictable. Moreover, at least some Chinese companies have proved willing to abandon investments as their perception of risk has risen. In September, for example,
Kingho, a large private Chinese miner, is reported to have abandoned a proposed $19 billion investment to build a coal mine and power and chemical plants in Pakistan's Sindh province after reassessing investment and security risks.
Indeed, Beijing's investment calculus is increasingly based on a sophisticated balancing of three types of risk: geopolitical, political, and financial.
Geopolitical risk (not least China's rivalry with India) has long led Beijing to support Islamabad through thick and thin. Friendly ties between the two help satisfy four Chinese strategic objectives: They ensure security and stability in China's western provinces and along its continental Asian border; anchor China's poorer western provinces in a web of cross-border economic activity; bottle up India in the subcontinent, forestalling the emergence of a continental-sized rival and precluding more extensive Indian security activities in East Asia; and assure that no other major power, particularly the United States, advances its interests in continental Asia at China's expense through, for instance, military deployments or permanent access arrangements.
In recent years, these four objectives have become ever more pressing, reinforcing Beijing's inclination to support Pakistan. Take the issue of securing China's western border. The drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan will, unavoidably, prompt serious questions in Beijing about Kabul's capacity to maintain security. That, in turn, will prompt still larger questions about whether Pakistan and Central Asian governments can suppress extremist groups and ideologies that may emanate from Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas and bleed across the Chinese frontier.
Beijing also aims to use Islamabad to box out New Delhi in Afghanistan and the broader region. Thus, India's expanding reach into East Asia is no doubt reinforcing China's reflexive tilt toward Pakistan. Until now, India has been, at most, a third-tier Chinese strategic concern -- distantly behind internal insecurity and challenges in the East Asian littoral. But India's rapid economic growth has given it a growing strategic profile beyond South Asia. India is becoming an Asian power and a global player. It is deepening defense ties with Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, four countries that are wary of China's rise and also are increasingly close to the United States. And New Delhi has signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Singapore, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as a comprehensive economic partnership with Japan. As India's strategic reach expands, a continuing rivalry with Pakistan that preoccupies its diplomacy and pulls its attention back to its own neighborhood remains a net positive for Beijing.
Through this traditional geopolitical prism, then, Beijing's relationship with Islamabad appears unassailable. But Beijing no longer has the luxury of looking exclusively through this single lens. Increasingly, it also balances the political, and especially financial, risks to its interests.
Chinese nationals in Pakistan have come under unprecedented attack in recent years. And Beijing is ever more sensitive to protecting those citizens -- mostly engineers and other skilled workers -- abroad. Libya proved a watershed in this regard because of the scope and sheer scale of the Chinese presence there. The onset of violence yielded a robust debate in China about the state's responsibilities to its citizens overseas. Sensitive to domestic perceptions and pressures, Beijing undertook its largest ever noncombatant evacuation, removing some 35,000 Chinese nationals from Libya by chartered merchant vessels, chartered and military aircraft, and overland buses. The Chinese navy also dispatched a frigate to support the operation, an unprecedented long-range operational deployment.
This means that
Islamabad cannot forever presume that Chinese workers and money will stay in Pakistan if those assets come under attack on a larger scale. Beijing has shown little stomach for telling Islamabad to rein in anti-India insurgent groups that operate from Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. But those groups that have killed or kidnapped Chinese nationals are another matter. And China appears to have begun sorting and distinguishing these anti-India proxies from domestically focused groups, such as the Baloch separatists or pro-Taliban elements that could pose a more existential threat to Chinese interests. Balochistan has seen repeated attacks on Chinese nationals, including a 2004 bombing that killed three engineers working at the Gwadar port and a 2006 attack on a bus near Hub. In response to one kidnapping case, conducted by elements associated with the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, Beijing placed ferocious pressure on the Pakistan army to intervene.
But it is investment risks, not geopolitical or political ones, that are more likely to alter China's long-standing calculus in Pakistan. Chinese money generally follows the flag, yet global trends suggest that Beijing is becoming vastly more sensitive to investment constraints and macroeconomic conditions. It is often taken for granted that Chinese companies can bear more risk than their Western counterparts and that Beijing will underwrite the kinds of investments from which most other governments and firms would shy away. But as China's global reach has grown, so, too, has its economic incentive to revisit these practices.
There are, for example, intriguing parallels between China's conundrum in Pakistan and the problem it faces in Europe. In both cases, debt-laden economies have aggressively sought to attract a portion of Beijing's considerable stock of investment capital -- its $3 trillion pool of foreign exchange reserves. But Beijing is weighing such activities against the many problems it must now manage at home. Investment in such environments has grown more difficult to sell domestically. As one pithy post put it on Weibo (a Chinese version of Twitter): "Better to save [debt-burdened] Wenzhou than to rescue [debt-burdened] Europe!" And when China does invest abroad, it is under enormous pressure to ensure a positive return.
So it matters more than ever that Pakistan faces an array of economic constraints, including a debt-to-GDP ratio that crossed 60 percent in 2010; painful debt service obligations to its creditors; a large fiscal deficit; double-digit inflation; a depreciating rupee; a trade deficit worsened by high global commodity prices; and above all, the lack of a credible growth strategy. Chinese financiers will be increasingly skeptical of the returns on investment into such an economy. And here, too, domestic politics come into play. Most of China's population has been left out of the growth miracle of the reform era, and the resultant income and development gap is economically and politically unsustainable. To address the problem, Beijing has been trying to redistribute resources to less wealthy inland provinces that are increasingly important to political stability. Road and infrastructure construction in Pakistan, as well as a bilateral free trade agreement, are tied to Beijing's effort to develop these regions. But these projects will increasingly need to meet higher expectations for returns than did China's traditional low-strings approach to aid.
All this means that China's calculus in Pakistan is becoming more diverse. The central question will be the extent to which political, and especially investment, risks begin to complicate the straightforward geopolitical calculus that has long yielded a remarkable intimacy between Beijing and Islamabad.
To be sure, Beijing is too strategically tied to Pakistan -- and too timid in its diplomacy, in any case -- to off-load an erstwhile ally. But
China is unlikely to be such an accommodating patron, either. Thus, it will prove less willing to fund the ambitious infrastructure development schemes Islamabad favors. And what is more, the scope and scale of future Chinese economic activity will not, in itself, produce rapid, sustained, and balanced Pakistani growth. In the long term, economic interaction with India -- the restoration of traditional regional ties and natural economic affinities in the subcontinent -- will almost certainly be more decisive.
The bottom line is that China will not simply "bail out" Pakistan with loans, investment, and new untied aid, as commentators watching the deterioration of relations between the United States and Pakistan seem to expect. Rather, China's involvement in the country will closely reflect Beijing's own priorities and evolving risk assessments.
For its part, the United States, which has failed to induce greater Chinese "pressure" on Islamabad, may be able to take advantage of China's new calculus to pursue complementary approaches focused on economics and finance. Countervailing interests, including China's effort to hedge against a growing U.S.-Indian partnership, will continue to obstruct strategic coordination between the United States and China in Pakistan, especially on anti-India and Kashmir-focused militant groups. But the more the two countries' economic threat assessments converge, the more Beijing and Washington should be able to turn a shared but abstract interest in Pakistan's "stability" into more complementary policies.
LoL really?
Sinking to lows here?
Why don't you do me and everyone else a favor and provide figures into how much China has invested into Pakistani infrastructure and economy?
An ally does not necessarily mean one that provides weapons for war.The friendship has gotten so many Indians into such a frenzy, that they fail to realize that our relationship is one of genuine interest, rather than one dimensional in terms of weapons deals..(cough cough India Russia).
Plz dont blame me for CT's and propaganda when it comes from pakistan's own TV channels.Thats why i mostly avoid posting indian channel programs here .coz at drop of hat everyone shouts indian propaganda.So its more to do with Najam sethi and geo tv propaganda +dawn propaganda.
