By: Salman Rafi Sheikh
When Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif met Xi Jinping on his latest tour to China in early June, the outcome was little more than mere rhetoric. Most analysts saw it in terms of China giving Pakistan a cold shoulder, marking the beginning of the end of the so-called “iron-clad” friendship. Xi’s statement reported by China’s state media made only a passing reference to the multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) a 3,000-kilometer complex of port, railways, highways, and electricity generation facilities not long ago seen as the Asian flagship of China’s trillion-dollar Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).
Although Shahbaz pledged full support to the security of Chinese personnel, an issue that Xi also raised in the meeting, the visit, in short, did little more than nothing in terms of what he said he was going to get: a ‘CPEC 2.0’, whose central constituent is 33 Special Economic Zones. Beijing, instead, quietly asked Pakistan to fix the problems for the success of ‘CPEC 1.0 first.
The Big Menu of Chinese Demands
If the early signs weren’t clear enough, the address delivered by China’s Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (IDCPC) Liu Jianchao to the third meeting of the Pakistan-China Joint Consultative Mechanism (JCM) in Pakistan last week brought to the forefront not only China’s concerns but also its demands from Pakistan for any meaningful relation, let alone an “all-weather friendship,” to exist and yield progress. Liu made some specific demands:
- Achieve internal political stability: Sustainable development can be possible only when all political parties in a country join hands to ensure political and social stability. “We are ready to build the upgraded version of CPEC […] we need to improve the security and business environment. Security threats are the main hazards disturbing CPEC cooperation,” Liu said.
- Improve the business environment: The ongoing poor business environment, not merely because of the poor security situation, is eroding the confidence of Chinese investors in Pakistan.
- Control western-style social media: “In particular, there’s a rising risk of Western social media which has a huge impact on the younger generation, eroding the foundation of the China-Pakistan friendship.”
These demands are in addition to at least two other recent ones. First, China has been pushing Pakistan for quite some time to undo the crucial 18th Amendment – which devolved powers to the provinces in 2010 – to create a more centralized system for “smooth” implementation of CPEC projects i.e., to ignore and suppress regional voices resisting China’s domination. Second, Pakistan must allow Beijing to insert its own security agencies to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel. Both of these demands failed to find any buyers in Pakistan, delivering an initial shock to the so-called ‘game-changer’ CPEC. But the recent demands are equally unlikely to be met and/or make a positive impact on the prospects of development.
Impossible Ingredients to Cook
On the surface, the menu of demands sounds crucial for the success, whatever that means, of “CPEC 1.0’ and/or the launch of ‘CPEC 2.0’. But a deeper analysis shows two things. First, these demands are far from possible to be achieved, at least in the short run. Second, because the demands are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, a permanent winter might set in the China-Pakistan ties, creating conditions for Pakistan’s re-integration with the US-led Western bloc.
First, China wants Pakistan’s political parties to unite, a demand that is unrealistic insofar as the underlying cause of political instability in Pakistan is the political interference of the military and the (security) establishment. The military establishment is highly unlikely to push itself out of politics. If China doesn’t understand this, it is naïve. If it does understand but is not interested in addressing the elephant in the room, Beijing has already resigned to the impossibility of improvement. Still, this is ironic because it was the military-backed government of Imran Khan (2018-2022) that delivered a major shock to CPEC when, after coming into power in 2018, it announced to review the entire project, sending it into lengthy hibernation from which it has thus far failed to recover.
There is little denying that security is essential. Pakistan earlier this week launched another military operation, Azm-i-Istehkam (‘Resolve for Stability’) to get rid of militant groups, which is nothing ‘new’ in the sense that it is little more than a continuation of many previous operations. Despite more than 200 military operations, 2023 saw a record six-year high increase in terror attacks, including several on Chinese personnel.
Second, there are different forms of militancy: religious and secular. The former is led by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is reportedly allied with the IS-K and shares a vision of China as a power brutally repressing its Muslim minorities. The latter is led by Baloch separatist groups, who have been waging their ‘fifth war of independence’ since 2006. They see China as an imperial power dispossessing the local populations of their resources. While both attack China, Pakistan cannot tackle them through military operations alone. Balochistan requires an entirely different prescription of de-militarization and genuine power-sharing – something that the Pakistani military leadership is completely unwilling to do. It is also assisted by other centrist forces occupying key positions in the bureaucracy, judiciary, the media, and political parties. In fact, China’s own demands for undoing the 18th Amendment will prove counterproductive insofar as it will intensify ethno-nationalism rather than force it to disappear.
As far as the question of tackling religious militancy is concerned, that exists primarily because of the Pakistan military establishment’s decades-long support for the Taliban. Although ties with the Afghan Taliban have recently deteriorated, Pakistan’s efforts to control TTP have turned out to be counterproductive. For instance, the recent decision to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees made Kabul indifferent towards Pakistan’s demands for eliminating the TTP hideouts in Afghanistan. As a result, the TTP continues to attack. Military operations will only drive them into Afghanistan, to come back later.
Improving the business environment is also essential. However, given Pakistan’s current dependence on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the taxation regime it has imposed, businesses are unlikely to improve in terms of making the economy competitive. Still, revenue collected from this heavy taxation will help Pakistan primarily with debt servicing rather than anything else. As far as China is concerned, Pakistan has little more than requests to roll over debts. Thus far, China has helped Pakistan in this regard, but whether it continues to do so in a situation where Pakistan consistently fails to deliver on its promises is moot.
A Chinese decision to not give Pakistan any further leeway will exacerbate the overall economic situation. In this context, if Pakistan follows China’s advice to put curbs on “Western social media,” it will only further roil the political landscape, potentially defeating the imperative of political instability. Pakistani elites understand that putting curbs on social media could create conditions for off-line, street agitation that might be a lot more difficult to control without a heavy political cost.
In short, the China-Pakistan ties currently find themselves in a blind alley offering no direct or easy escape. If they don’t improve, it will create much stronger incentives for Pakistan to improve its ties with the West, including the US. Washington, which is already seeking to build and expand a global anti-China coalition, might find in Islamabad an ally that must be rescued from Beijing.
source : asiasentinel