Friends in need
IT reflected all the forlorn hope of a tail-ender, a twelfth man, the last of a dozen protocols signed between the Pakistan and China at Beijing on October 15. The final document was a Memorandum of Understanding between China's Cricket Association and the Pakistan Cricket Board.
That the Chinese should wish to learn the game from us -- once World Cup victors -- is understandable. They learn from the best and then outstrip their teachers. Just count the number of medals they won at the Beijing Olympics: 51 gold out of 100 at the Olympics, and 89 gold out of 211 at the Paralympics. Such laurels are not won by simply resting on them.
In the 1960s, we were an economic role model for the South Koreans, and our national airline PIA taught others (including the now unstoppably popular Emirates) how to fly. Our Tarbela Dam was the envy of developing countries for being the world's largest earth-filled dam. We played hockey and cricket better than the inventors of the game. Today, we have been relegated to a position of geo-political irrelevance, and geo-economic bankruptcy.
Shamefully, and worse still, shamelessly, we have yet again dusted our begging bowl and begun approaching our friends for help and financial support. In the past, China had invariably been the quickest off the mark. It has never baulked at coming to our aid -- whether it was for materiel in 1965 or in 1971, or cash when the Chinese government provided $500 million during the early years of Musharraf's penury to bolster our foreign exchange reserves.
The only condition they placed was that it should not be spent. It should lie untouched in the balance sheet of the State Bank, a borrowed fig-leaf covering our insolvency.
Today, a new government in Pakistan is hearing a different response from a new China. While both parties value the special relationship that Chinese President Hu Jintao once described during his 2006 visit to Pakistan as "higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the Indian Ocean and sweeter than honey," during Presdient Zardari's visit to Beijing, he was reminded by President Hu Jintao of the need for "deepening the Pakistan-China strategic relationship in the new circumstances."
The Chinese also emphasised that both sides needed "to accelerate the implementation of the Five-Year Development Program on Economic Cooperation," their elliptical way of expressing disappointment at the lack of progress on a mechanism they take more seriously than we do.
The Five Year Program, signed with great fanfare in November 2006, aimed at expansion of bilateral trade to $15 billion over by 2011, cooperation in agriculture, manufacturing, automotives, urban infrastructure, minerals, tourism, financial and engineering services, and investment policy support. Two years have gone by, and the Chinese are still waiting for any one of these sectors to attain measurable progress.
Until that happens, according to some sources, Pakistan had hoped that China would improve upon its earlier largesse and deposit anything up to $ 3 billion in our coffers. The Chinese and their hard-earned dollars are not so easily parted. A Chinese official explained: "We have done our due diligence, and it isn't happening."
It is believed that the Chinese have agreed to provide two more nuclear plants on the lines of Chashma I & II. Interestingly, this commitment was disclosed not in the joint communique but unilaterally by the Pakistani side, which then coyly declined to tell when or how these two plants would be built.
The new plants should add 680 megawatts of electricity to our national grid, but before we invite the neighbours in to admire our illuminations, we would do well to remember that it took Chashma I nine years to reach commercial operations, and that Chashma II, begun in 2005, assuming it proceeds on schedule, will not be complete until 2011.
Even if all four Chashmas -- two in hand with two still on the drawing board -- are complete, we will still only have 1,300 MW against the target of 8,800 MW from nuclear sources planned in the Vision 2030. Meanwhile, we must reconcile ourselves to many long, hot summers, while our neighbours luxuriate in nuclear energy made possible by the US and Russia.
Had Charles Dickens been alive, he would have been tempted to use Pakistan as a model for Mr. Micawber who, despite his perennial insolvency, remained convinced that "something will turn up." Our "somethings" are Plans A, B & C. Plan A is to obtain $1.4 billion from the World Bank, $1.5 from the Asian Development Bank, $1 billion from the Islamic Development Bank, and another $1billion from DFID. All of these are project-related and disbursable once projects have undergone the gauntlet of rigorous appraisal procedures.
Plan B is to approach the Friends of Pakistan, an informal gathering of friendly creditor-nations who are being asked to put their money where their hearts are. Although the first formal meeting is yet to be held in Abu Dhabi, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher has chilled Pakistani expectations with his comment that "no cash" should be expected. It seems that while our friends are prepared to teach us how to fish, they are reluctant to trust us with the cash with which to buy the tackle.
Plan C, which is not really a plan at all, is to crawl to the IMF and to eat crow. It will not be the first time. Between 1998 and 2001, we entered into nine separate arrangements with the IMF. They know us all too well, with the practiced understanding of a family pawn-broker.
There is a feeling in official circles that, as the IMF will always be there anyway, other sources of fiscal support should be explored before going to a Shylock as the last resort. One can expect that whatever conditionalities the IMF applies to us, no matter how beneficial they may appear to be in the long run, they will be no more welcome than a penitent's hair-shirt.
It is time perhaps for us as a nation to learn the lessons we have been teaching others for so long. Rather than borrowing money from the Chinese, we could perhaps borrow their ideas. Once, the Chinese wanted to learn English so that they could spread throughout the world and then teach everyone Chinese. Perhaps they want us to teach them how to play cricket so that they can compete throughout the world, win the World Cup, and then teach everyone how to play Mahjong.
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