The Temple of Heaven in Beijing’s Forbidden City was not built circular by accident. It symbolised the conviction that the throne of the Chinese emperor within it represented the epicentre of power. From it, authority radiated throughout China and beyond it, the world. The modern equivalent in Pakistan is a rectangular air-conditioned goods container, or more precisely two containers, parked in Islamabad’s forbidden Red Zone.
For the past three weeks, since August 14th, two leaders – Tahirul Qadri a born-again Pakistani, and Imran Khan a born-again democrat - have claimed the right severally and jointly to determine the governance of 180 million plus Pakistanis. With the same arrogance that Chinese court once displayed in demanding that every visitor ‘kowtow’ to its emperor, these two have commanded their adoring public to pay homage at their feet. They demanded that opposition politicians approach them as supplicants. And at a diplomatic empyrean, they expected the Chinese president to visit a capital besieged by them, a capital in which even the country’s president cannot guarantee his own safety.
Nothing could be more symptomatic of the condescension with which Pakistan treats its relationship with the People’s Republic of China than its behaviour over the visit of the Chinese president Li Jingping, postponed only days before it was due to take place. While both governments, like some Hollywood actor-couple asserting the durability of their marriage, take pains to repeat that their diplomatic conjugality is ‘as high as the Himalayas, as deep as the ocean, and as sweet as honey’, nevertheless, despite Pakistan’s cockiness and China’s Confucian sagacity, their relationship is like the painstakingly-carved jade bowls from which the emperors once sipped their tea – adamantine, yet fragile.
It has been said before that while Pakistan loves China for what China can do for Pakistan, China loves Pakistan despite what Pakistanis do to themselves. Move away for a moment, though, from an Islamabad-centric view. Step out of its Red Zone, and take look at Pakistan from a Chinese perspective.
China needs Pakistan no more than a person suffering from schizophrenia needs two migraines. China does not require a warm water port that can provide it access to the oil-rich Gulf. Pakistan, unlike some equally unstable African countries, is not poised on an atoll of irresistibly valuable minerals. Pakistan can never match what India has begun to offer China - as a trading partner, as a friendly albeit wary neighbour, and as a powerful ally in international forums.
Unlike China and in time perhaps India, Pakistan will have barely enough food to feed its burgeoning population, scarcely enough electricity or gas to meet its escalating energy requirements, hardly enough industrial growth to support its economic development, and certainly nowhere near the science-based technical skills or IT expertise needed to compete in international markets. Then why should China continue to carry the weight of this basket-case of a country?
There is no one in Pakistan who could provide a cogent answer. There is probably no one in China who would dare to. One thing is known for sure. The Chinese must be sorely disappointed at the turn of events in Pakistan that should have resulted in the postponement of the visit of their president.
State visits at this level are the fruition of months of meticulous planning. Just as an example, before Queen Elizabeth II visited Pakistan in 1997, numerous advance teams came to reconnoitre - from the local British High Commission, the Foreign Office, the Queen’s Household, even the conductor of the military band that would play at the various royal functions. Everything was planned – who she would meet; who she would shake hands with in the receiving line; who would receive only a nod; who would receive an award. The only thing left to chance was the behaviour of the aged Rolls Royce that she had used during an earlier visit in the 1960s and which had been resurrected for a second round of duty with her.
State visits by foreign dignitaries are not like hotel bookings, vulnerable to last-minute cancellations. Everyone involved in arranging this visit is putting a brave face to this debacle. However, even the Chinese must have watched with dismay at what caused it, at the unseemly contest between Imran Khan, Ch. Nisar, Aitzaz Ahsan, Shah Mehmood Qureshi - all four of them Aitchisonians, all engaged in a pillow-fight that should have been resolved years earlier, in their dormitories, not in Parliament.
Many believe that Ch. Aitzaz Ahsan’s Mark Antonian-style speech during the Joint Session of Parliament merits a place in Pakistan’s parliamentary history. The advice he gave to Nawaz Sharif had a briefer parallel in the remark made by a British parliamentarian to his opponent: ‘We are not your enemies. We are your adversaries. Your enemies sit beside you.’
(C) F.S. AIJAZUDDIN
Dawn, 11 September 2014
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