DAWN - Opinion; 27 January, 1998
Things to learn from China


By M.B. Naqvi

PRIME MINISTER Nawaz Sharif is soon visiting China. In view of the long-standing friendship between the two countries, it would be meet if this visit does not remain a usual protocol one.

Pakistan is 50 years old as an independent state and its economy happens to be in straits and its political life is showing disquieting, indeed dangerous signs and propensities. Internationally it is pretty much isolated. Let PM Sharif seek some light from the east and try and learn the secret of what has made China's development an envy of most countries in the world. Only that will make the visit worthwhile because in less than 50 years China has achieved not merely a great power status, but also economic and monetary sinews which support that status.

Two outstanding leaders of China have shaped its destiny after the 1949 victory over Kuomintang. The first was Mao Zedong along with the galaxy of his colleagues and the second was Deng Xioping who undertook in 1978 the programme of four modernizations. Mao got China out of the middle ages and the mire of underdevelopment and then went on to ensure rapid industrialization as well as excellent - under the circumstances - social services covering everyone among the Chinese. Mass under-nourishment, illiteracy and ill health more or less vanished from China.

Just when the country's pace of development was beginning to decline, Deng introduced a new policy orientation of relative opening-up of China to the rest of the world. Ever since, the 1978 programme of Chinese development has been an envy for the rest of the world. It has grown by over 10 per cent annually and its monetary reserves have been high and its balance of payments is in comfortable surplus.

Chinese progress in both economic and military terms has been enviable. There is obviously much to learn from it. But certain questions arise and will have to be answered before an underdeveloped country can benefit from the Chinese lessons. The main threats to China today are two: will overheating of its economy begin to produce adverse results and will the new wealth now being largely cornered by a small section create new social tensions? A subsidiary question concerns the future of social services.

Pakistan would want to learn a great deal from China. But before that we have to know where we went wrong. After all, we had started at least two years before the old corrupt regime was defeated in China. Pakistan's progress has been marred by frequent regressions and debacles. The country came to a sorry pass half way through its independent life. Today its condition is causing anxiety; the economy is teetering on the brink of loan repayment default and catastrophe.

There is need to make a clean break with the recent past. But the government seems to have no new idea on that. All it knows is to rush to the IMF, seek guidance from it and sink deeper into the mire of debts and commitments it knows it cannot meet. There is obviously something that we do not know and have missed. That should be the leading question in the mind of most Pakistanis, including the prime minister, who should seek some light on the subject from China.

No doubt, the primary aim of the visit is to cement the ties between the two countries and to continue the cooperation that already exists. China has been very cooperative and helpful to Pakistan. Indeed, Islamabad has acquired the regrettable habit of taking Chinese friendship for granted. Pakistanis are not too mindful of what they owe to China. Hopefully, that should end now. We should study what China is trying to do and what are its overriding concerns. Can we be helpful in any of its concerns? And we should know what our own situation truly is and what help can we reasonably ask from the Chinese and what can the Chinese be realistically expected to provide.

Pakistan's primary need is twofold: First and foremost, it must make its economy turn around and put it on the road to industrial development - of the right kind. It should be a sustained process of development that should lead to further development and it should benefit the people of this country in matters that are their primary concern: jobs, a social safety net, provision of social services like health care, education and technical help and guidance in developing agriculture and productivity in the industrial field. There may also be some scope for not merely technical aid but for cooperation in the fields of scientific and technological initiatives.

Insofar as sciences and high technology are concerned, China can provide places for students and research scholars in Chinese institutions of excellence. There can also be joint research with joint ventures in both big industry, infrastructure and high technology. Above all, the Chinese can provide advice on combining social concerns with the requirement of rapid economic growth - the fields in which the Chinese have made a happy combination.

But that leaves out the question of what are China's foremost concerns. Obviously the primary one is its own growth in the economy as well as in the political strength and influence. Once it goes on growing economically and does manage to distribute the fruits of growth more or less equitably, the next focus of concern is its role in the international arena. The Chinese have provided ample indication of their own priorities and aims. They have declared their chief foreign policy concern is to ensure that the world should in fact become a multipolar; it should cease to be dominated by one superpower. Among its day-to-day policies, the chief short- to medium-term objectives of its foreign policy are managing its own relations with the US and coping with the growing power of Japan.

In neither of these cases is China taking any rigid view. Although the US is pursuing a two-track policy of both 'engagement' and containment, the Chinese are responding positively to the engagement part of the US policy and are taking counter-measures in relation to the containment component of the American policies without saying anything needlessly harsh or hurtful. They are relying on their own military and political clout to counter the American efforts to contain China and to isolate it.

The Chinese do not hesitate to flex their muscles where it is needed such as on the Spratly islands or in the case of Taiwan and certainly Tibet.

On the larger international plane, the Chinese have taken a bold initiative in rebuilding friendship with Russia. As far as it lies in China's power, it would lead Russia out of its quagmire of economic regression and anarchy compounded by political confusion.

China's own strategy towards Japan is not to stumble into adversarial relations. Here, it has not followed a two-track policy like America. It has mainly a single-track policy of friendship on honourable and peaceful terms. It wishes to ensure that Japan remains a peaceful and peaceable nation and does not embark on a course of bellicosity or to adopt an active foreign policy that may lead to 1930s- like aggressive economic and political offensive that pushed South East Asia into the Second World War.

It does not complement the policy with any military threat, though it leaves no one in doubt that its own military power remains a deterrent to all evil designs against it.

For the rest, China regards itself as a Third World country and wishes naturally to lead it. This is a field in which Pakistan should encourage and indeed request China to adopt a more active leadership role by mobilizing and organizing the Third World on issues connected with globalization. The position of the Third World in the new world economic order, supervised by WTO, happens to be at its lowest ebb. Hence the need for a 'reassemblement' of the Afro-Asian and Latin American sentiment in an organized form.

Pakistan needs to learn primarily to stand on its own feet and to do what it can with its own resources. For knowing this Mr Sharif does not have to go to China. But from China we can learn the formula for ensuring rapid growth and combining it with social concerns of the people. Maybe, the latter part holds the key to the former. Specifically Pakistan government can learn a lesson or two from the Chinese on making their armed forces a productive factor in the economy.

Not only are the armed forces not a burden on the Chinese economy; they in fact contribute to the growth of the economy as well as to national income without ceasing to be a strong fighting force.

If we can do some such thing we can find a way out of the debt trap much more easily. That is the way to turn the economy around and to attract China into the industrial growth of Pakistan by offering it opportunities for investments that yield it normal returns.

Chinese help should benefit both countries and we should reorient policies of economic development in a fashion that approximates, to a growing extent, to the Chinese model of combining social goals with rapid economic growth. Let us beware that the Chinese do not relish frustrations of the kind they have experienced in the Saindak project.