Engaging a New China

By Ahmed Quraishi

Younger Pakistanis are not satisfied with the Sino-Pakistan relations. For decades now, this relationship has been the exclusive domain of senior political leaderships on both sides of the border. Time has come to energize this relationship by expanding it to include direct cultural and intellectual contact between the younger generations in Pakistan and China.

This is not a call for cosmetic changes or an improvement on diplomatic niceties. Giving the Sino-Pak relationship a younger flavor has become crucial to sustaining this relationship and to better serve the strategic concerns of the two great nations in the new century.

To be sure, the older political elite and intelligentsia in Islamabad and Beijing have built this relationship on solid foundations. However, a recent paper developed at a Pakistani think tank “Engaging a New China: A Brief Look at Emerging Trends” shows that while fresh opportunities exist in both capitals to reinvigorate the Sino-Pak ties, some emerging negative trends require urgent attention and remedy.

In the last two decades in particular, younger Pakistani and Chinese elites have had strong exposure to western education. But instead of creating commonalities, this seems to be leading to divergence in viewpoints. The younger Chinese intellectuals and policy analysts, mostly educated at American universities, carry some of the misperceptions and biases generally held and fostered by the liberal American academia about Pakistan. Similarly, many younger Pakistani political and business leaders look to New York, London, and Dubai as the ultimate models of development when an impressive success story like Shanghai and even Beijing (which hosts the 2008 Olympics) lies right in their backyard.

Perceptions about China in both official and nonofficial Pakistani forums remain very positive. The same goes for official Chinese institutions. But a simmering tension is discernible within the emerging younger generation of Chinese policy analysts between a Pakistan-friendly mainstream and a Pakistan-averse lobby that sees Pakistan as a distant country that shares little with China.

This negativity is partially the result of Pakistan’s own belated and slow moves to project its real self as a dynamic nation. But the American academia has also had an influence on China’s best and the brightest. The American educational institutions, many of them bastions of the American left, have emerged in recent years as forums for informal interaction between Chinese and Indian students of international relations. That is healthy. What’s worrying, however, is that many future Chinese leaders are forming their first impressions about Pakistan from these forums.

The American academia has long held the distinction of producing endless stacks of slanted and biased research on Pakistan. The fact that this is changing now, especially after 9/11 and as a result of the policies of the Musharraf administration, is a positive development. But as Pakistan’s incorrect global perception persists, so do the opportunities for the Pakistan-averse lobby to exploit. This small group privately compares China’s problems with Muslim-origin separatists in its Xingjian province to India’s problems in occupied Kashmir. This, they say, is a proof that China has more reasons to moderate its ties with Pakistan in favour of greater engagement with India.

Exaggerated fears about Islam, or Islamophobia, is also a factor that is being negatively exploited by this group to support the theory of an inevitable clash between Islam and the world’s non-Muslim civilizations. The argument of this group is that China must side with the West in this supposed conflict. Consequently, this group argues that, compared to Pakistan, India can be a potential natural partner for China.

Pak-Sino relations are dangerously dependent on older paradigms and there is an apparent generational gap. The new generation of Chinese intellectuals is more susceptible to global perceptions. It can find a socially-liberal India more attractive than Pakistan’s widely flawed image of a socially-stunted and politically-unstable state. The harsh Chinese reaction after the murder of a kidnapped Chinese engineer in Pakistan in May 2004 should be understood within this context.

So what can be done to expand the Sino-Pakistan strategic convergence to greater levels in the 21st century? Despite some emerging negative trends, China’s social and economic policies present an opportunity for Pakistan to exploit. These Chinese policies match Pakistan’s own new forward-looking thrust. Our gradual and guided political transition is also an area where we can benefit from China’s own experiment in guided political, social and economic development.

For the first time in more than a decade, Islamabad’s own social and economic policies correspond to those followed in Beijing and share the same goals. Many Chinese officials are not reserved about showering praise on Pakistan’s unexpectedly well guided political and economic turnaround in the past five years.

During an informal exchange of views between visiting Pakistani dignitaries and Chinese experts at the National Defense University in Beijing in January, a Chinese expert said that some of his colleagues found Pakistan comparatively far well off on a social level than almost all of its neighbours, with the exception of maybe Iran. “For developing countries, the guided model of government is better,” he said, addressing Pakistani parliamentarians, “like PM Mahathir did in Malaysia. You should let the country come to stability. That is a prerequisite to prosperity.”

It will be a tragedy if this groundswell of goodwill is allowed to dissipate in the new century by not expanding this relationship. The paper introduced at the Pakistani think tank recommended several far-reaching steps to energize the Sino-Pak ties. This includes introducing modern Pakistani music and television in China and vice versa; sensitizing the Pakistani elite to modern China; accelerating dialogue and interaction between Pakistani and Chinese academia and bridging the linguistic gap.

Prophet’s revered saying, “Seek knowledge even if you have to go to China,” is a sign of Islam’s earliest respect for Chinese wisdom and knowledge. The biggest challenge facing Pakistan and China in the new century is to create a common ground between the ordinary Pakistani and Chinese peoples that would bridge cultural differences and the global changes in perceptions and politics.

Source: http://nation.com.pk/daily/apr-2005/19/columns4.php

Date Created: 11/8/05

Date/Time Last Modified: 11/8/2005 11:29:45 AM

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