China's Road Through Pakistan

terrific first off welcome everybody my name is Eric brown I work here at Hudson Institute I'm delighted that all of you could come here for what I think will be a very interesting discussion on what is I think the most interesting set of relations in all of Asia frankly and potentially one of the most strategically consequential relationships in the 21st century that is the china-pakistan relationship I am sorry to report that Husain Haqqani our colleague here at Hudson Institute his bogged down in Chicago in O'Hare Airport because of some bad weather there so I don't think he's going to be able to join us for this panel he may swoop in in the last minute and if we have some space for him I'd love to solicit some of his ideas but fortunately my colleague and friend Aparna Pandey the director of Hudsons South Asia initiative has agreed to sit in and to offer some remarks off-the-cuff on what this very important China Pakistan relationship means from the perspective of India and so I'm grateful for a partner for filling in for Husain China's one belt one road plan as everybody know has rightly received worldwide attention as one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects project plans in all of history as it is envisioned will place China at the center of an expanding network of new overland and sea routes that will connect East Asia including China itself but also the Pacific Rim countries of the Northeast and Indochina with West Asia eventually and also with Europe and one day as well Africa if it is realized the so-called 21st century Silk Road could one day connect 63 countries and through this it will come to transform how two-thirds of the world's humanity interacts politically and economically this will to put it mildly have far-reaching geopolitical implications for the world for for the deep structure of across eurasia and for American interests in American security policy on both sides of the Eurasian world island both in the Pacific as well as in the Persian Gulf and also I think increasingly as well in Europe already here in the US and in Delhi in in Japan and elsewhere around the world people are scrambling to make sense of what all these new developments mean for their own national development policies and for their own security going forward in Pakistan as we know the country's leaders there are used to conceiving of their country as being the pivot of the world and in many respects over the course of the last 50 60 years they have in fact played a very pivotal role than some of the great geopolitical competitions and turnings that have defined Asian intra Asian relations I think in very significant ways Pakistan is the pivot of the world once again it's where the rising Chinese rising Chinese power is increasingly involving itself in West Asia in the Middle East and it's this relationship which if consummated has real broad far-reaching implications for the Persian Gulf as well as for the Pacific Rim China says it will invest upwards of forty six billion dollars in in developing mega projects in Pakistan this includes roads railways pipelines and other kinds of infrastructure which is designed to create if you will not just a road connecting China to the Arabian Gulf but also infrastructure which will create a self-sustaining economy in Pakistan itself and it's the expectation that this investment in Pakistan will in time alleviate and ameliorate some of the impoverished an and some of the ethnic faction and religious unrest that we're seeing in Pakistan that is certainly very appealing to ordinary people in Pakistan and certainly has been useful for Pakistan's politicians politicians and selling this Chinese involvement in their country over the long run to put this into perspective this 46 billion dollars that China has said it will bring online is roughly three times the amount of FDI that's come into Pakistan since 2008 and also since 9/11 I think it was tallied up that the United States has provided roughly fourteen billion dollars worth of security assistance to Pakistan so again this Chinese economic development dwarfs most of what is going into Pakistan right now and through this investment I think it's very likely that that China seeks to acquire influence in Islamabad as well as in Rawalpindi up until relatively recently the so-called rise of China was largely conceived as being primarily a maritime or an oceans oriented phenomenon in the first 30 years of its existence the People's Republic of China despite mounds a dongs modern radicalism had in a way attempted to replicate some of the empire building strategies of previous Chinese dynasties they sought to create a notar key and largely a land based economy that was self-sustaining and able to be able to sustain itself on its own terms and through its own domestic industry and resources this proved to be very difficult to do historically and under modern conditions it proved to be an impossibility and therefore after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 the Communist Party abruptly shifted both its internal economic Arrangements and its international alliances toward the sea it entered the global commercial and financial system and was supported in this by the US and also by other maritime nations including Japan together these created the Bo's most benign security environment that I think China and any Chinese based polity has seen over the last 200 years and it was through China's deepening interaction with this benign security and commercial environment that that the so-called rise of China was launched I think future historians however will look back at two thousand eight and more recent times and see that we've reached a new inflection point in China's rise the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 and the consequential rolling economic and political crisis in China itself as once again started if you will a reappraisal for the ruling party in China about how best to pursue its rise and for the party itself the question is what is the best strategy for maintaining its monopoly on power in China we've seen since then just over the last decade a real reappraisal of China's grand strategy and and and re centering if you will of China's grand strategy where people who are where various factions in the government businesses and elsewhere have increasingly said China should no longer simply pursue its it's rise at sea but also it should deepen and put greater emphasis on building out new kinds of connections with the Eurasian landmass on the continent there and think a number of different reasons which are driving this people have left to ascribe various geopolitical ambitions to this to this to this new to these new developments there are clearly also domestic factors at play in China it's very difficult to look at any any kind of external conduct of the Chinese regime without looking to at what the actual domestic sources of that conduct are but it's also clear that I don't think that this is going to end any time soon and that we're likely going to see much much greater involvement on the Eurasian landmass by China and the years ahead the ruling factions in in both Pakistan and in China have looked at this I think as an opportunity to solidify a strategic partnership but also to further their own politics domestically and and I think we're going to see some very interesting consequences from this in parts of China that are where in the PRC is attempting to establish much much more control such as Tibet and in Shin Ji Young but we're also seeing along with the announcement of China's investment in Pakistan an effort by the Pakistani army to to raise a force to bring Pakistani state power deeper into parts of Pakistan where it hasn't existed before and by that I mean Baluchistan and parts of gilgit-baltistan which abut Shin Ji Young and other places as I mentioned all of this is beginning to change the way in which different countries of Eurasia think about their development strategies and their security strategies going for going forward all of this is quite new and we're here to explore some of the implications of this over the coming years we have an all Hudson panel here but I think that our speakers represent a diversity of perspectives on this very complex set of relations I'd like to begin with Charles Horner who is a sign ologist by training and author of some books and articles on China as well as a book soon to released book which is the second volume of a series rising China's postmodern fate Charles well thank you and thank all of you for coming and it's always nice to be here on the team of Hudson Hudson all stars are all earl hudson team a few years ago actually mostly Eric and but I will say Eric and I decided we would invent a new field of inquiry which we called cynic Islamic relations and the idea here was to understand if I may use some academic lingo the interaction between the Islamic world and the Chinese world in many different ways intellectual political economic and so on and as we began this we notice that PRC as a state interacted with all kinds of predominantly Islamic societies in many different places but the one thing they had in common from PRCs point of view was that if PRC were ever to emerge as the great power if not of its own dreams then at least of its cheerleaders it was going to have to figure out how to manage these relationships and they're all very different some of them as Eric said a maritime Indonesia for example is a Muslim country in which China has a relationship with the people who s Nikoli dominate the economy and so's Malaysia and so it's Bangladesh and so all the countries of Central Asia all nearby reminder of the extraordinary diversity of the Islamic world and a reminder that we always need to remind ourselves in this business that among all of the Muslims in the world leave the Arabs or well probably smaller than smaller than smaller than one-quarter so as we began to think about this then the idea was to use a more academic lingo to locate the locate cynic Islamic relations in what we called a a kind of world a kind of world setting and at the relationship among the various parts and how they work we were reminded of this this morning when in the midst of the latest let's say crisis involving Isis and Europe and the United States president United States actually left and went to Manila and so the question would be how are these things related and they are and they are related in some ways I think in the PRC strategic mind so it's important to look upon this in a world you know in a world context that what happens in one place is connected to other places and is a kind of shifting picture kind of kaleidoscopic in that in that sense now the other thing that we got interested in is we began to think about this some more was what we call the the the Continental versus the maritime view of things that that act referred to and we gave it a fancy academic term of the Continental maritime dialectic you all know what dialectic is if you're an undergraduate American College of my age you could not escape understanding understanding what that is and and our first a sort of well I'll say set a basic approach to it is how you going to organize your great Empire remember Harold McKenna who wrote about he who dominates the heartland will control the world and publish this in this point of view by the way fell into into real this way too because everyone was reading the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan as Eric mentioned he who creates a kind of naval force of a certain kind will will will run the world and then we were drawn to the example of let's call it rising Japan the rise of Japan Imperial Japan where both of these visions of the future of the country how to secure the realm how to secure the existed came into conflict the conflict was never resolved and some of you may remember that on the one hand the Japanese could not decide whether they concentrate their efforts on the mainland of Asia or to fight the Maritime Provinces powers in the Pacific and so I decided to fight both and lost in both places so we thought well maybe there's a lesson in this somewhere that our friends are in Beijing or paying attention to now I myself like to borrow from the discussion of someone named William Callahan who teaches at the London School of Economics who's written about the vision that informs the grand Chinese view of things but in very interesting ways and the question is what does the world look like what is the order of the world the world order and lately there's been reappearing in the past several years in the Chinese and let's use another academic term about shall we discourse of these subject a language a vocabulary a discourse if you will which he called sino speak and and and sino speak is a way of talking about the world in traditional Chinese categories of power hierarchy and organization and Empire with the traditional view of the chen zhao all under heaven and the Emperor and his munificence radiating outward from his court as against what he calls rim speak the rim speak a sort of Asia rim Pacific century speak and the conflict between these two things these two vocabularies and ways of imagining the world in in in the first line of the book that that that I wrote that Eric mentions this a lot there's a lot of stuff about oceans focus and how we're going to reinvent area studies all over the world and give it an oceans focus and how all the cities of the world your memory all remember Pacific Rim you know Los Angeles and Vancouver and Tokyo and where am i leaving out you know son Chile is that so the ocean pacific oceans got to be it all these people's going to be have a gigantic version of the Hanseatic League and we're going to have quote the Pacific century and we'll go on going to speak Pacific century speak or rim speak and as eric says well there's less and less of that kind of speak going on even among us native speakers of this language let alone the people who have have adopted it and so it is a sense that we're in a transitional period we're beginning to imagine now the pre let's call it the pre maritime view of what a great global Empire looks like 350 hundred year PC Power View a must startling development you over remember when when the Portuguese arrived in the small ships and transform the entire economic and political and strategic structure of the world and people kind of thought that these places in Central Asia were left to die on the vine and would be behind the vine forever now there's an odd confluence both of crisis of confidence plus the domestic requirements of the Chinese Communist Party to perpetuate its its rule plus the the pressures of a certain kind of cynic Islamic relationship plus a necessity really or PRC to become more involved in from its point of view the Father Near East rather than the closer Near East involvements in Iran in Saudi Arabia and places like this and seems to be some controversy engine by our own dr. ben Carson as to whether or not the Chinese are in Syria but doesn't matter from the point of view of this kind of discussion they're probably they're probably a few a few there so from this point of view it's interesting to look at the one belt one road strategy and the enormous amounts of money that are being invested in it at least by announcement and compare that with what are other forms of investment that are going on in China well there seem to be two others that we can detect the single most important is of course the enormous growth in the development of the internal security forces to keep order especially in Muslim cynjohn which is now under a kind of lockdown and there may be by some effort more than a million armed men representing PRC in in Xinjiang of all of all different kinds and reports and reports of violence the second is this enormous remember 46 billion for Pakistan and untold billions for the Asia infrastructure Bank lots of commitments of money as against what's being spent on developing the Chinese Navy which is a lot of money and which is the kind of thing that we in the West note is most because it's the kind of thing that is most conspicuous for us but the question is does that really represent the long-term vision of of the people who are in charge it in PRC at the moment now one of the finally I just say this is a way of trying to understand this relationship that's developing between China and Pakistan aside from the question of the neither of the much likes India which seems to be isn't nothing you know we which is an important important aspect of it to what extent it is part of a larger strategy of involvement in the Islamic world extension of Chinese influence out of necessity into a father Near East where the structures of states the old state structure is crumbling the Western powers are receding and they still are aside from the 20 bombs that the French Air Force has recently dropped on Raqqa and how the China Denny Mayer emerge the imagines itself in this new configuration and whether or not it really has to be a giant maritime power in order to do it or whether it can reach this area as as Eric suggests by imagining corridors through Pakistan and corners to other places also through Kazakhstan to take it to what after all is one of the core strategic region's strategic regions of the world and so we will our planning I think in future to look at this relationship especially between China and Pakistan as what it it may 410 not merely for the future of Chinese calculation but what it makes about this whole desire on the part of China to link itself to the Islamic world either by land or by sea or also by land and by sea and what this means for the maritime powers such as the United States and it to an extent Indian Japan and I'll just say one other thing about this we've gone on too long about it one thing we we need to think about now especially in the u.s. is the role of the the maritime the for the you know the for maritime powers or the three here in Pacific right now how they should evaluate the meaning of this greater activity in central and Southwest Asia on the part of PRC what it means to us how we should respond to it whether or not we should as we say get busier in that part of the world or not you know Prime Minister al baiy was recently there took a tour of the stands promised a lot of money understanding that in some way the future of Japan and its security is implicated in what goes on in that part and then that quite I'll stop and thank you that was that was terrific thanks Charles next I wanted to ask Leon Chauhan if he would be happy to speak Leon Chow is a fellow here at the Institute former Senate staffer as well sociologists political scientist by training also the vice president of a group called initiatives for China which is working to foster peaceful and democratic futures for for China nan Chao thank you ah it's the most critical component of China's new Silk Road initiative the 46 billion china-pakistan economic corridor symbolize a beginning of China's strategic shift but why is China doing this more importantly why we're this cippec will lead China to more dauntless self-destruction or nowhere so I'm going to my Agata folks my talk of what the Chinese have to see about it and what is my own assessment most Chinese strongly support set back and some of the strategic thinkers scholars even believe that this is the greatest strategic opportunity I I was in a thousand year opportunity for China to regain the word dominance it is not surprising because you know in the past 30 years that China's foreign a policy changed a little bit more focused on practical side were to deliberate more practical you know focus more on the return of captive investment but essentially this is still a top-down decision making mechanism so says she Jim key the chairman of everything talk power the decision-making mechanism become you know even more top-down and more rushed far less predictable Xi Jinping has already decided go ahead with the CPAC anybody that expressed in different view well likely to be found guilty of four in purply you know discussing openly opposing government policy Shin John Daly chief editor is the example of that like that crime but I think the support is almost one-sided because of the government because she deep his decision so most people would argue most support would argue that this CPAC will allow China to counter would be the best way for China to counter the u.s. pivot to Asia and without a head-to-head confrontation they believe that us through the rebalance policy at EVP that try to encircle China but CPAC well United channel to move into Middle East Central Asia Central Asia and Africa so by doing so breaking China see a break the u.s. in current of China and allow them to strike the US and its weakest point where the u.s. power inference feeding away passed and I very so get an up hand over the US a very typical Chinese communist strategy using the rural areas to encircle the city by the Duke and nine power they can offset their sea power and resolve the Malacca dilemma so to speak is securely their energy route hey and thus you know if they control they believe they control the region they will control the world and at the same time I think they also believe that this cippec will effectively contain their common enemy near Pakistan China's common enemy right rival I would say India and also help China secure its border let's enjoy the Muslim region and by emulating wigger your threat wigger terrorist threat once and for and I think they another important argument they made is that China this cippec will continue help channel expand it clinically and that find a new market for China's over capacity our production capacity and also get a better return of China's piling up for trailing foreign reserve and meantime they will help channel create a booming economy in the Chinese western area and yeah yishun to that they will provide strategic materials for China to sustain long-term growth and and of course one important component is that is they trust Pakistan as a whether friend that can protect and guarantee their investment and that's why they do the hope the one-sided support for CPAC it's pretty overwhelming but there are some opposing views in China even it's very small but still care can be hurt I was told actually within the system there are large people strongly opposing such a investment but in public you wouldn't see any you know like a publication not very many not very many articles you can find on internet but the the opposing view basically saying that this is a rush of Xi Jinping's Russia blood to the head decision the projects many of the projects they are not well studied evaluated there's no review and oil Magnusson and now open bidding process in place so many of this you know it's a many of these projects will be you know he wished it and they also think that it doesn't make any economic sense because building that railroad pipeline and the highway it's going to be extremely difficult to build and to maintain guess we know the curb current highway closed only they only use for half a year and because of the wider the high high altitude they can use the whole year round even with the expanded highway I doubt they're going to keep it open all year and last time they had this nice slide and blocked the highway the kkh for almost 5 years and and that's you know and then the premise of Melaka yield dilemma is also forced because if us they were thinking because six percent of China's oil transported through Malacca Street the argument for the project says you know by going that way we can avoid American you know blocking the Malacca Street but the the opposing views is if America can block Malacca they can easily block Hormuz Street as well as Gwadar port so it doesn't make any sense to you to to just simply do that way and and then there's also another concern that because of access that political instability you know the internal conflicts and regional you know that a shame terrorists separate movement that this kind of a large investment could be become the NASA her alone this is less hurdle is a cheap and this long and large some of Japan is known they need to lend to Chinese pay young warlord 23 government in 1970 and that when they do government formed in 1925 they refused to recognize that that that loan and that default loan become one of the reasons that triggered the Japanese and Chinese war and and then they there's also argument the opposing side argue says that yo by building this corridor you're going to enable more Muslims enter into Shin Jang the region that create even bigger security problem for China so my my own view is this I think this is the China's one stone many birds strategy to create a channel lead of challenge ornated intellectual new international relations and a new world order but because of China's paranoia about there region security being kind of rushed to make that decision not as rational as they should be more based on on the geopolitical calculation than a sound economic principle and then this road more likely lead child to lower that's that's my assessment because at least it won't go anywhere for a long while because I don't think that both sides are ready for that Pakistan's political instability regional notation Rijo tension cultural and social problem anyone can stop this can derail this project for example you a per when she Jim key was in Pakistan officially filing their fifty-one MOU and officially launched this project and then a month later you may Pakistan all party conferences finally agree to support it you see that gap between the official knowledge in the project and finally your Pakistanis have come out supporting it so and also I I want to see I won't point out and China's own Great Western development program which officially announced fifteen years ago offered a very good reference point because lots of money invested lots of routes built lots of power plant built and other infrastructure built but so far does not generate I blooming a booming economy the failed to generate a that economy so they I think they are like traditional foreign aid to Pakistan this time the investment it's an investment not eight-channel demand a higher return of their captives they want flex island government to guarantee that for example there's a solar project near Karachi which is about a cost the capital cost is about seven seven hundred sixty million dollars after all the seven percent fee service and feed that service fee and other financial stuff and also construction the interests all added up they have to pay tax telly has to pay nine hundred fifty million dollars so the big interest rate during the construction will be as high as 33 percent so such of the investment will certainly create conflicts create resentment from Pakistani you know people and then at some time you know a China I don't think challenge I rely on their iron brothers words to protect their interests because they had to suck into Pakistani know their brother their house good internal affairs politics and this is of course a very dangerous integrant as history can tell us and I think there's a much better way to for China to help Pakistan challahs all successful a economic development in the early 80s over a much better model because you'll be the infrastructure you liver you use liberalization deregulation create a better environment for the investor coming into your place like Taiwan business people from Taiwan from Hong Kong from United States that bring factories bring jobs bring technology sprint captive-bred you know like management skill with trilling create a viable economy and after that happened the infrastructure that did it will follow so it's much better way than building this corridor and you know that the part is still you know given the the whole party conference endorsed a plan but the their fight for the routes which we'd go and the projects along the corridor never resolved so I'm going to end my my talk why using this chick Spears warning neither a borrower nor a lender lender for long oft loses yellow itself and friend so China which a lot hide their future to this very risky and dangerous you know like a unstable part of the world they are most likely going to lose their shirt in this gamble thank you thank you thank you dr. panda um Eric thank you and wonderful to be on this all Hudson panel I'll speak a little bit about India and New Delhi and how it does nudity look at the sign of park relationship on the one hand means if Pakistan stabilizes and you have a democratic economically stable Pakistan that would be ideal for India however they are things the Delhi fears first Delhi is is is concerned that China's overall this the one belt one Road initiative is not benign not only in Pakistan but with other neighbors of India China is invested and is building infrastructure in Sri Lanka in Bangladesh even Nepal and further into Myanmar's so that is the first part of India of New Delhi is concerned secondly Delhi's been concerned about the sino park relationship for a long time now the relationship dates back to 1950 Pakistan was the first Muslim and non-combat think first Muslim country to to to acknowledge communist China and so Chinese economic aid investment has been coming in from 1950 onwards however the relationship has been very strong in the defense and nuclear arena and that has concerned Delhi predominantly something which with Charles said which reminded me of how Pakistani theorists and analysts look at China Mukunda they actually believe Pakistani analysts believe that Pakistan is the pivot of the world and that draws from the Rimland heartland that Pakistan is in the rim land area and but that Pakistan is important and so the belief that not just United States but the China would be interested in ways in investing in Pakistan is something which is very old dates back to 1950s and 1960s but coming back to something that both Eric and Leon Chow said New Delhi's concerns are primarily that that is not going to be a economically stable Pakistan which will result from a which would result from CPAC it will be a Pakistan which has more or let's say more defense relationship with or a deeper defense relationship with China has a bigger conventional military and has more nuclear reactors and more nuclear material and that makes the entire region especially the India Pakistan relationship even more unstable than it currently is um I will stop there and these are this purposes I just mentioned one more thing quickly Owen Lattimore who was the very well-known and at one point politically controversial great American authority on inner Asia wrote a book called shinjang pivot of Asia you see and therefore the world so depending on what your you know the focuses of your grant application that we all did have started into thee and turn it into the pivot of the world and and no problem there so yeah perfect I'm I'm curious I wanted to ask Aparna and perhaps Leon Chou if they could speculate a little bit about what the possibility of the prospect of greater Chinese investment and involvement in Pakistan might mean for Pakistan's internal political development I asked this in part because I recall as it was a late 2008 when I was in Islamabad and spoke to a Pakistani retired Pakistani corps commander we were speaking about Balochistan as well as the looming energy crisis that Pakistan was suffering from at the time and which has only gotten worse and the commander said to me that the Pakistani army that the discipline in the ranks was beginning to break down at the time because it was increasingly more difficult for officers to direct their soldiers to open fire and volute separatists and that this was becoming a much much more difficult strategic policy for the Punjabi elite in Pakistan to pursue that is bringing state power to Baluchistan going forward for that reason I was struck that when the CPEC deal was formally announced was also announced Nawaz Sharif had said that Pakistan would raise security force of upwards of 12,000 Pakistani security agents to help protect Chinese workers who would be building out this infrastructure and to among other places Baluchistan and in other places now of course this security force would be green it would be certainly not the same forces which the Pakistani core commander had told me about that we're losing discipline and losing desire to to involve themselves in Baluchistan back in 2008 so my question is I mean even if the great Chinese road through Pakistan does not realize itself and even if these investments do not aim or ties and bring returns back still the prospect of this investment still has implications for the internal balance of power between various Pakistani factions and within the government itself I'm curious what you think the next few years might have an in store for us as a consequence of this just a few points and then one is this I mean as Leandro mentioned there's still a disagreement within Pakistan in Pakistani power centers on very exactly and which problems will get more of the the projects which are coming in mr. Sharif and as well as his brother in Lahore would like more of them coming to Punjab Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would like more of the projects and so so there still is agreement which of the four Pakistani provinces and in some ways it's Punjab versus the rest yeah is it believe that because the mr. Sharif's party dominates Punjab and that's where most of the economy most of the businesses that it depends on me actually end up benefiting from from from cippec second issue is that in Balochistan where the port guada because I mean the ideal would be that everything should move towards water so that you you land up on the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of hormones however the Baloch insurgents and Baloch are not in favor henlon have never been in favor of foreign investment coming in they protested even when father port was being built by China many years ago and they have continued their protests even is still not agreed or accepted that's the second problem with China is going to face in CPEC third you mentioned in 2008 I was actually in Pakistan in July 2008 when the Red Mosque siege took place and at that time the Pakistan Army was concerned both with the fact that there were people who were not very happy I mean within the army that they were actually having to work against Islamist who for many decades had been seen as their allies they're not just the Baloch insurgents it was going against people who are from Punjab or or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and they were having rebellion in some of their regiments in the tribal areas and in some cases if you recall at that time some of the soldiers were actually kidnapped by by groups in the federal in the FATA region because the soldiers refused to fight though speaker and finally you mentioned the power problem one of the problems Pakistan has had an electricity problem for almost Papelbon was three or four decades now 1990s every Pakistan civilian government which comes in has tried to resolve it now they try to do in the early 1990s they actually got foreign investors who would come in and set up what is called independent power projects the problem was in the 1990s every two years Furman's changed and the succeeding government refused to recognize of the previous government the promises and so no foreign company was willing to therefore go back in and lose as GE and others had done in the early 1990s in the last five seven years our civil governments have again try to bring in but the problem is that you need to provide that stability and promise that any project which which starts now will continue and it will have both economic stability as well as government's ability right yeah yeah yeah I think it's going to you're going to see more regional attention in Pakistan to fight for they protect and I I think they a few month ago they have their poor province went to the Parliament demonstrate in front Department they hold it big banner you know China Pakistan friendship no china Punjab friendship so that says so you know lots of the project goes to the Prime Minister's province so that we will create lots of tension and and also I think the energy even they build the projects because of the investment cost the electricity it's going to be more expensive than they used to pay so that will also create some kind of reason you know in that country ya know it that's one thing about enshou is very interesting point about the relationship to all of the story policy initiative in PRC in the late 90s called go West policy and the idea was to build up the western part of the country and to deal with these awful problems of income inequality and son it turns out I think I don't know but one suspects that the central government for a while had a very hard time bringing that part of Western now China proper the heel you remember those pay attention to these sorts of things that back end I guess was 2013 there was a fellow Bain bourgeois who built up a great power base out in Sichuan province which the western part of the country and he was brought down and who knows how much of this is true but it was wonderfully lurid kind of tale where his wife poisoned her British lover and he was guilty of what kind of Korean sense of it and then he was brought down and it turns out of course reading between the lines of the current anti-corruption campaign that all the people who were in and must've been a very large plot because it brought down the retired min former minister of men who ran the secret police who had gotten to run the secret police because he had once run the National Oil Company and it built up an astonishing slush fund for paying off people in assumes and this whole anti-corruption thing it's all the people who were involved somehow in some way you know lieutenant generals in the PLA in the Western Military Region taken down during all of this which adjusts even now there's a problem of bringing this but we China large in a traditionally restive area under control so I think that's another interesting perspective on all of this is the use of this sort of thing somehow to develop greater political power for the new party central a lead in this part of the country where it's been having its problems and I don't want to praise which I say I do want to praise my colleague liane Chow for it it's been a long time since I China history major heard the name of Dwight Chi ray and his sidekick I so who paid from the old Bayon Morla see available Bayon work you just have to know this stuff and the old and the old china studies and the new china studies of course we don't but I'm I appreciate that a bit of sin illogical nostalgia here terrific let's have some questions sir thank you ah David is be conspicuous by its absence more for very interesting statements is Afghanistan the heart of Asia in recent years there has been fought in Kabul that China's policy towards Afghanistan is changing from basically backing up Pakistan's actions in that country to one which shows its own security concerns of Islamic terrorism and investment what do you is this going to you think this will actually be realized or will China's interest in Afghanistan be primarily in supporting Pakistan in the future the entire transmission you know I'm trying to remit Salah so it's getting very fuzzy in my mind but when we Eric and I first got interested in this a man who purported to remind you who Jintao's principal advisor on Central Asian affairs you remember this fellow came through town and visited all of the think tanks and was telling us about how China was now prepared to play finally a very constructive role in Afghanistan and it was great big copper mine and arrived everyone in packet in in in Afghanistan in order to get it and and and and so so we're always hearing these stories about an act and the problem for the u.s. of course is it is sort of akin to and I don't want to start any trouble here but sort of akin to this problem now that you know with the Russians and Isis well we don't like the Russians but maybe they'll help us with it now we don't like the Chinese do we want to build up their influence Afghanistan to find some way for ourselves to get out and so this sort of thing is is seems to be going on all the time of the furtive people actually know about all these intrigues in Pakistan Aparna would you like to UM what is what has changed recently in happened is that China has actually come in on what I call that the Taliban peace talks so I mean what people believe is that China has managed to convince Pakistan the Chinese investment in Pakistan in new of that kind pakistan needs to help stabilize not only its own country but also afghanistan and so in the taliban peace negotiations and talks they are chinese who are present it's not just Americans but Chinese Pakistan Afghan rebels and Taliban representatives how much of an influence China is able to exert on Rawalpindi and how much influence Rawal Pindi is able to exert on the Taliban our representatives is still up in the air primarily since we got to know only a few months ago that mullah omar was supposed to be alive for two years actually passed away two years ago and so his people who represented him didn't actually represent him and so there's that thing there but China has started to play an active role in Afghanistan and I believe from I mean something with China would like a stable Afghanistan but I'd leave China to yangzhou I think you're right I totally agree I think China's it's in the best interest of China to to stabilize Afghanistan particularly after us to leave withdrawal and China I think I heard they privately pay Taliban you know to stay away from their poverty you know heavy mines but the the factor of Isis it's on now it's uncertain I think it's in China's best interest to you know join hands with the the America with other countries to eliminating the ISIS inference expansion in Afghanistan but that is out now factor I don't think China can control that at this point yeah ma'am Catherine Porter with the Leadership Council for Human Rights thank you wonderful presentation I have a simple question but it's probably the most complex question I've been working very hard with the blue CH and the Sindh in Pakistan trying to unify them it seems to me that this coalition between China and Pakistan will be built on the bones of those people we need to look at that much more hardly and secondly it's the u.s. funding of the ISI which is killing those same people why can't we bring some definition to what we get from Pakistan in terms of response and I have been on the ground there extensively so I would be interested in your reaction to that thank you I guess I'll take your second question first why hasn't us change this policy in 50s 55 years is something I don't know if anybody can actually answer but if you actually look at but if you look at the US archives you see that every American administration coming in believes that it must do something and give more money in aid to Pakistan and every president in his last year up till now he decides that that no it's not it's not good and it's not going anywhere but we'd have to wait for the next president to see if this if the cycle actually changes are coming back to your first question I mean Pakistan I mean by all the things which both Yun Chao and I pointed out is that Pakistan the problems China is going to face in Pakistan is that is this not just regional but ethnic they're not just separatist movements they're also the fact that that all the ethnic to groups in Pakistan except for the Punjabis actually believe that they have not been provided enough representation in any arena or whether it be military academia or otherwise and so they do feel that they are neglected they haven't got enough investment not just Chinese even foreign investment doesn't come into these areas there are human rights issues but I think I mean I do believe that international agencies and the US government are talking about it but it's it's something which takes which will take a long time and I hear you on what you said and I just said yeah I think the u.s. lack of grant strategy towards Pakistan in the past maybe 28 ill-being Oh 30 Billy that aids military do humanitarian that given to you the Pakistan but they don't focus on strengthen Pakistan's you know democracy rule of law respective Hewitt's I think we don't have that strategy how to do it without this grant strategy you cannot stabilize Pakistan I think you know us need to have a better strategy a strengthened rough law strengthen the democracy system and respect human rights and then they can fundamentally yo stabilize Pakistan yeah I'll add that yeah I mean the the relationship between the US as our colleague Husain Haqqani has written in a fantastic book has been based upon magnificent delusions that we've each told ourselves about the other number one they also tend to think the us-pakistan relations newest policy toward Pakistan has not been driven by principles or any sense of a grand strategy but really by the bureaucracies and by bureaucratic inertia and now I think you're seeing in the United States a desire on both sides of the political spectrum to reorganize our policy towards South Asia as a whole something that would bring about a sort of reefs entering a shift away from Islamabad and Rawalpindi toward New Delhi whether that will open up an opportunity for much greater clarity about the real human rights abuses that are taking place in Pakistan and not I don't know I should hope that it does my own view is it precisely yours that one of the areas of collusion if you will between certain elements of the Beijing regime and the one in Islamabad is that both of them see each other as co-conspirators if you will in facilitating their domination of their peripheries of their ethnic peripheries I tend to think that the possibility of federal stabilization in Pakistan a political solution if you will do the problems that the Bellucci face of the problems that the gilgit-baltistan YZ face and even to the problems that the posh tune face that that possibility of a federal stabilization it becomes increasingly unlikely the more China China's investment works its way into the country I also tend to think that that both elements in the Pakistani regime and in the Chinese regime want to build their relationship simply because they see it's their immediate purpose consolidating control in China's case over sinh ji-yong and in Pakistan's case over Balochistan I think that that really is the intermediary objective of this of this alliance because just one quick point I think the reason we don't have that grant strategy because the folks very short-sighted just get rid of the Taliban you know but after so many years to tell about still very you know there yeah so I think US needs to review it's a strategy how to deal with Pakistan yeah really strengthen you know the democracy a roof law yeah to move forward yeah Keith Harper our new ambassador - on United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva is Cherokee we've discussed extensively indigenous issues as are the Baloch and many other people he was and I asked him to meet with some Bellucci leaders he was told by his boss that he couldn't do that because if we criticize Pakistan in any way the UN would be forced to remove all of their projects on the ground now somewhere we have to rethink our larger ability to work in the State Department and in the world and I just wanted with that other thing thank you sir wait for a moment for the mic to make it to you thank you a couple quick comments one I think it's a mistake to say that we could create a grand strategy that will stabilize Pakistan and just to offer an exception to Aparna's presidential compulsion to aid pakistan clinton bill clinton entered office without that compulsion they were under sanction at the time but though I'm Alan Kronstadt from the Congressional Research Service and I I think I want to make a comment and ask a question that the comment is mostly about conceptualizing this and I was so happy that you emphasize that China is investing in Pakistan that this is not a foreign aid program and I think it's a big mistake to conceive of this as foreign assistance Pakistan acts you know with a lot of self-interest in this regard and it's in its investment and so like for instance there's an implicit comparison between US aid and and and Chinese investment that's promised at the time that the seat Peck was announced there were headlines running about forty six billion dollars from Pakistan or from China as opposed to roughly thirty billion from the US that's really apples and oranges you're talking about there never mind that half the 30 billion is reimbursements for military support but you're talking about 30 billion dollars given Pakistan grants versus 46 billion dollars being talked about given Pakistan in the future and as a part of mention there's nothing new about Chinese investment in Pakistan this this rhetorical romance and commercial relationship has been going on for decades so I think it's important to make that distinction so the question I had though and it's kind of related the the chine that Chinese Pakistani people the people relations seem very thinly developed and you don't see Pakistanis buying homes in in Shanghai and Beijing you don't see parents sending their children to college in China so I'm wondering to what extent that kind of limited people-to-people relationship fundamentally limits the the kind of investment relationship or alliance that that the two countries can have despite all the sweet honey laced rhetoric about their eternal friendship Thanks the Angelica stab at that I I think if you look at the media on the Chinese side even the Pakistani side you see lots of this romantic you know view of all-weather friendship iron Brotherhood but in fact I think you know as you said that people-to-people exchange it's not as that great and China even don't have enough Pakistani scholars who study Pakistan so the child really don't understand the culture the country and I think in the deeper sense a Chinese usually look down on Pakistani people because they think the backward and also if you look at the the highway kkh most of this one way yell trait you don't see that from other side they'll come to this way so that type of relationship and also you see the the when they build the protects you always bring Chinese you know workers to work on the projects even chef you know they bring their own chefs you def recur in there yeah but when China opened up before you see the old companies brainerd your workers to work in your changin the old management to all the old technology so that one way kind of trade I think harm the people-to-people exchange and but I I would say China has since then put more emphasis on the study you know they set up with language programs you know in the past few years and more more people studied studied they would will do and and lots of think tanks also set up in the university to study that region so you will see more and more people-to-people exchange because if they want make this successful investment they have to oh I think I'm going to say that the scale scope and imagination of PRC objectives in Pakistan has grown quite a lot over the years so in the beginning it was it seems to me kind of India focused and kind of closer and it's only lately really I think that this idea of Pakistan's involvement in a great PRC undertaking to connect itself to all this has has come has come to the fore and this is this business of people-to-people relationship when Eric and I started getting interested in this kind of stuff I was tricked by a phenomenon that I call kind of Chinese Orientalism is distinct from Edward Sayid Orientalism and the the if you like the characterization of Islam and Muslims in the Western world is more or less the same in China only more so all right no it is Lama say as a creed is very hard to at least in the West it can be said to derive from Western religious teachings no such you know the traditional Chinese statecraft which is anti religious and anti superstition all the rest of these things finding this increasingly hard and very very difficult to understand to fat much harder you know no I like this but but but the study of the Near East and Islam is well-established in the in the Western world in the European world been chairs of it for a long time in Oxford and Germany and to a lesser extent friends and still what it reduces to especially in the popular mind this is all unfathomable it's unreasonable these people are crazy you can't deal with them and and and it's only more so with dual laughs so my friend Leon Chou it's Oh with with the overlay of traditional Chinese well racism haughty ism and and sort of looking down on everybody and everything and so I think this is an enormous Lee complicating factor at any and every level and we are we're happy to see the rise of it you know Islamic Islamic studies in in China but that hasn't made much of a much of an impression at all I would think thank you time for one more question now remember you asked one question you get four answers hi I'm Julia and I'm an intern here and I just had a few questions about what China has prepared I guess for a back-up plan so let's just I mean that's really laid-back terminology I apologize but let's just say that Pakistan does eventually start to fall out of favor with the Chinese ideas and become uncomfortable with them you know and their strategy and what did they plan to do about the way India feels about their project Thanks I don't know what I mean I think but I think the problem may be more not may not be that Pakistan may not do what China wants in the economic arena but that Pakistan may be incapable of doing certain things a China expects it to do with regard to what Leon Chow said you know about providing stability about providing the 10,000 or 12,000 strong force about helping them sort of you know get back some return on investment which they are going to invest in in Pakistan but I mean they they're a lot I mean they have been over the years many for investors who wanted to invest in Pakistan but they've not really been able to get the depth the stable secure environment where they will get on an investment and so I think that's where the problem in Pakistan will come and the rising radicalization of the society Islamization the growth of Isis in the region and the other groups I think that may be a bigger problem and that may mean that Pakistan cannot deliver what China is expecting yeah I think they also the the CPAC the plan itself last year the whole year Colin Pakistan's yo arguing about yeah what to do you know back and forth back forcefully their weakness I mean realized materialized this year but there are lots of issue has napkins resolved like the railroad they still in the stage of yo like a study feasibility study stage so China can easily by car that the investment because all the investment eventually has to be fun I mean raised by one of this so grow the font so they if they didn't get enough even if they don't get enough fun listen you know we don't have enough you know investors they interested in this and they can also back off that way but I don't think they it seems to me they won't press ahead but which one they already approved so many over probably dozen maybe fifteen projects and that's already under construction so I think they're going to push ahead regardless this is more as I said geopolitical than economic only yeah just just say briefly I think it's the case now let's say the United States these days and you know certainly in West Europe that the feeling is that projects undertaking undertaken in the in the Islamic world don't pan out or they don't pan out with ease and facility with which one thought or those that particular game may not be worth worth the candle why one should think that that that that PRC which is in every way less well-equipped to operate in this part of the world then then the Western powers are or the US or the or the British or anywhere else should I'm going to learn from the on show how you say in Mandarin boots on the ground but you know the first 10,000 guys you need to protect your 46 billion oh and and so it goes and I suppose I'm struck by the fact that these enormous schemes and plans and ambitions that that POC is laid out for itself not only in Africa but in Latin America and in the Near East and so on you know seem seem not to be working not to be working at with the ease and comfort which they had thought they might and there are many examples of this now in Latin America and Africa and in and in other places so we just have to see how this develops and what it means to the future of this well of the global distribution of influence in power which i think is what we ought to be interested in I just want to add one more point I read this article from my scholar in China he said if we fail at the setback fill it's no big deal we learn our lessons 46 PT is not a big deal we have four trillion euro for reserves there and on that note we'll see how this others evolves thank you very much for all of you we visit this again I'm sure before the years out

Channel: Hudson Institute

Views: 66,371

Keywords: China, Pakistan, China-Pakistan relations, New Silk Road, Aparna Pande, Charles Horner, Lianchao Han, Eric Brown, Hudson Institute, CPEC

Id: u1ahrMhq9LQ

Length: 74min 7sec (4447 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2015