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IT is not sound policy to treat Chinese presidents with the same casual insouciance that we reserve for our own Mamnoon Hussain.
Each head of state is the symbolic apex of the nation. The difference is that China’s President Xi Jinping owes his pre-eminent position to the collective confidence the Chinese leadership has in him to propel their country into the 21st century, while President Mamnoon Hussain owes his sinecure and ‘grace and favour’ residence in Islamabad to the personal generosity of the Sharifs.
Nothing could offer a starker contrast to the norms of reciprocal hospitality than the treatment each host country has shown its esteemed guest recently. The Chinese president received Mamnoon Hussain on a state visit in February, and again in May 2014. President Xi Jinping had to cancel — ‘on security grounds’ — his return visit to Pakistan, scheduled for Sept 14-16. It was a shabby quid pro quo, especially after Xi Jinping had singled out Pakistan as China’s unique ‘iron brother’.
The Sino-Pak relationship defies rational analysis.
The relationship between Pakistan and China invites such euphuistic analogies. It also defies rational analysis. Even though both countries became independent within two years of each other (Pakistan in 1947 and China in 1949), China’s role over the past five decades has emerged as that of an unstinting donor, Pakistan’s the voracious, insatiable donee.
China’s support to Pakistan has covered the gamut of inter-state relations — political, economic, military, nuclear, trade, social, and now terrorist-related.
Why should China commit itself to Pakistan with such monocular single-mindedness? After all, its trade with Turkey is twice as high, with the Philippines three times higher, with India six times higher still. The answer was given in a rare moment of candour by a Chinese diplomat. “Pakistan,” he explained, “is our Israel.” Out of the mouth of such junior functionaries comes Confucian wisdom. Geopolitical considerations such as US support for Israel and Russia’s for Cuba are their own imperatives. Like human passion, they overwhelm reason.
If President Xi Jinping should accept General Sharif’s invitation to attend the grand military parade planned for March 23, he can expect to watch roll past him tanks, missiles and weapons that reveal a discernible Chinese DNA. If he looks upward, he will recognise the silhouette of aircraft such as the JF-17 and J-10, modelled on Chinese prototypes and now being manufactured in Pakistan with Chinese help.
If he should travel south by train, his carriage will be hauled by Chinese-supplied locomotives. At Gwadar, he can stand in the sand-pit port that will soak up over a billion US dollars of Chinese investment. And looking out across the Indian Ocean, he could catch a glimpse of the F-22P and Jianwei frigates, ploughing through the waves of what might soon have to change its name, if his Maritime Silk Road achieves fruition.
President Xi Jinping’s gratification at seeing so much Chinese military materiel would be understandable. He would not have to relive US President Barack Obama’s excruciating unease on India’s Republic Day, when he was subjected to an unending procession of Indian armaments and hardware that owed their paternity less to American largesse than to Soviet/Russian generosity.
President Xi Jinping’s dream of a Maritime Silk Road is already India’s nightmare. His ‘string of pearls’ — linking Shanghai with Colombo, Gwadar and Mogadishu — is viewed by India not as a graceful ornament around its slender, peninsular neck, but as an encircling, constricting noose.
Some Pakistanis see the proposed Silk and Rail Road that will connect Kashgar with Gwadar as a divisive cleft, bifurcating their already riven country. Others have misgivings about plans to eliminate Pakistan’s power deficit. The Chinese made a hasty proposal to build 10 coal-fired power plants, each with a capacity of 660MW. They retracted after they realised (belatedly) that the local infrastructure required to support such ambitious projects did not and was not likely to exist.
Concerns are erupting about the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s K2 and K3 nuclear projects, being constructed within a donkey cart’s ride of Karachi’s overpopulated city. The risk of a nuclear accident, Karachiites have been told, is ‘almost one to nothing’. Survivors of any nuclear accident will be reassured by the memory of such odds.
China warns Pakistan of the ‘three evils of extremism, splittism and terrorism’. It has traced terrorist tracks from the southern region of Xinjiang into Pakistan territory. They expect their ‘iron brother’ to deal with them. He will, as soon as he can rid himself of the same three evils at home.
The fourth evil that no one talks about is obsolete technology. Poor countries like Pakistan get hand-me-downs. These may be tailored to fit, but their designs remain dated. Technologically, Pakistan will have the same DNA as its imported arsenal, the single child born of Chinese parents and Russian grandparents.
The writer is an author and art historian.
Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2015
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