AMONG the many unfathomable adages that abound in Pakistan is that of our unbreakable bond with China. If India-bashing is our national pastime, then extolling the virtues of our great friend to the north comes to us almost as naturally.

Every few years the China rhetoric reaches fever pitch, typically when relations with patron-in-chief Washington start to fray at the edges. It seems to matter little whether or not China does actually bestow great favours upon us; what matters is that China continues to be, as tautologies go, China.

The initial love affair was initiated by Gen Ayub Khan in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Till that point, Ayub had left no stone unturned to be designated Washington’s lapdog in the region, but Delhi’s fallout with Beijing induced John F.

Kennedy to put together a health/military aid package for the Indians. Cue the field marshal’s courting of the Chinese.

As it turned out, over the next decade Pakistan was to become the conduit for the US-China détente that changed the whole course of the Cold War. This role was more conspicuous than any major tangible gains that may have been garnered from unconditional friendship with China, the Karakorum Highway a notable exception.

Today too it can be argued that China is contributing in some measure to economic development in the form of big infrastructural projects with big capital outlays (even if some of these projects exacerbate an already untenable conflict in Balochistan).

But today there is also the small matter of Chinese goods and services flooding Pakistani markets and further enfeebling our already emaciated industrial bourgeoisie. And China is no longer committed to the model of socialist internationalism that informed its investments in the past.

Whatever the Chinese now put into Pakistan — or any other country for that matter — they almost inevitably take out more.

China has become the world’s economic powerhouse on the back of a huge reserve army of labour and while it may see eye to eye with Islamabad (read: GHQ) on certain geopolitical imperatives, its first and foremost priority remains economic expansion.

In fact, as the reported decision (denied by the Pakistani ministry concerned) of a Chinese bank to pull out of the long-in-gestation Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project indicates, the Chinese may not be necessarily willing to antagonise Washington and assert themselves as an alternative geopolitical pole to the Americans.

Notwithstanding the exhortations of right-wingers in the media, academia and within the political mainstream, the Chinese will not soon replace the Americans as our primary benefactors in terms of military hardware and training. In fact, China has never offered substantial support in this regard and, to the extent that military cooperation between ourselves and Beijing is increasing, the Pentagon’s special relationship with GHQ is in no danger of being superseded.

So why then does China continue to be held in such high esteem in the ‘public’ eye in this country? For that matter, why do we harbour such wildly varying attitudes towards major external powers with high stakes in the Pakistani polity, economy and society?

China is not the only example of a ‘friend’ that can do no wrong. The case of Saudi Arabia is even more curious. Saudi influence within this country is second to none. Yet public debate, let alone criticism, of Saudi interventionism in Pakistan is unheard of.

Since its inception, the state has inculcated highly polarised and totalising conceptions of ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ in the Pakistani mind. These conceptions of the ‘other’ have parallels in the conceptions of ‘patriots’ and ‘traitors’ within our own borders.

These simplistic notions have provided a fillip to xenophobic politics and to conflicted understandings of the world more generally. So until two decades ago, Americans were ‘ahl-i-kitaab’ and great friends in the fight against godless communism.

Now the same Americans are the biggest kafirs of them all, and principled resistance to their hegemonic designs is now incumbent upon all of us. Needless to say, a distinction between Americans as people and the American state as an imperialist power is glossed over.

The relatively small number of Pakistanis who have disputed these crude binaries has grown steadily over time. But an ordinary Pakistani is still unlikely to be exposed to informed public debate about ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ of the state.

A more sophisticated level of debate can be evinced on pages of newspapers such as this one, and within the Sindhi press, for example. But Urdu newspapers and the TV media, public schools, and muezzins and imams reinforce all the hackneyed half-truths — sometime outright lies — that have been part and parcel of the public discourse since the very beginning.

Perhaps as if not more important is the role of political forces in reinforcing these myths. The Difaa-i-Pakistan Council has recently emerged from the ashes to remind us all of the existential threat posed to all of us by evil India. The Jamaat-i-Islami has been organising ‘Go America Go’ rallies across the country for two years or so now (thereby reversing its ‘Come America Come’ policy of the 1970s and 1980s).

In the final analysis, I have no gripe with any Pakistani government choosing to befriend China per se. But an informed foreign policy choice requires recognition of both potential advantages and disadvantages in the adoption of the proposed policy framework.

It is not by chance that debate about foreign policy options — including a prospective non-aligned, anti-imperialist policy — remains conspicuous by its absence. Foreign policy in Pakistan today remains the preserve of the men in khaki, and their lackeys in the federal bureaucracy.

To date, the National Assembly has not moved beyond broad, sweeping condemnations of ‘enemies’ or endorsement of ‘friends’ when foreign policy issues are taken up on its floor. The Senate has engaged in such matters with slightly more gusto and erudition. But there is a long way to go.

Chinese, Americans, Indians or any of the world’s many peoples are not inherently pro- or anti-Pakistan. The sooner we realise that the world does not work this way the better.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.