A single life
HOW many deaths give a single life meaning? In Pakistan, even the massacre of 150 APS students and teachers in Peshawar in 2014 was not enough. They have become a statistic. To the Chinese, every national is priceless. This was brought to the fore at a conference in Islamabad on Oct 29 to celebrate China’s 75 years of ‘Progress, Transformation and Global Leadership’.
During the conference, Deputy Prime Minister & Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar dilated for over an hour on Pak-China ties. Deviating from his prepared text, he made some unguarded remarks suggesting that President Xi Jinping, during his meeting with our PM, had told him that China regarded Pakistan as an exception in matters of the security of Chinese nationals.
Dar told his audience: “The Chinese are very clear; no matter how lucrative an investment is anywhere, if the security issue is there, they do not send Chinese personnel. Your country is the only exception.”
Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong publicly contradicted Mr Dar’s recollection of the PM/Xi meeting, insisting that for Beijing, “Security is the biggest concern”. Jiang continued: “It is unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in only six months,” and urged Pakistan to take action against “all anti-China terrorist groups”. Alluding to the vulnerability of CPEC, he said: “Without a safe and sound environment, nothing can be achieved.”
Why is security of every Chinese so important to Beijing?
Our Foreign Office entered the fray. In response to a question during the FO briefing later, a correspondent asked the FO spokesperson whether “any action [would] be taken against the Chinese ambassador for violating the diplomatic norms and rebuking our foreign minister” (shades of the démarche sent by the previous government in 2022 over US diplomat Donald Lu’s “bad manners and sheer arrogance”).
The spokesperson responded with the official line that “Pakistan is committed to providing full security to Chinese nationals, projects and institutions in Pakistan”, adding gratuitously that “the statement of the Chinese ambassador is therefore perplexing in view of the positive diplomatic traditions between Pakistan and China”.
The Chinese have a better institutional memory than our officials. They have not forgotten that 200 Chinese workers died while building the Karakoram Highway. They are buried in Gilgit. In 2021, nine Chinese workers were killed in a terrorist attack in KP. In 2022, a suicide bomber killed three Chinese instructors at the Confucius Institute in Karachi.
In March 2024, five Chinese nationals were killed in a suicide bomb blast in Shangla district. Last month, two Chinese nationals died in an explosion near Karachi airport.
After each of these attacks, our governments have resolved to “resolutely act against all such forces and defeat them”. Equally often, the Chinese government has insisted on Pakistan taking “tangible actions rather than [offering] assurances”.
Why is security of every Chinese so important to Beijing? Because the one-child policy has meant that if anything happened to any individual bread- or noodle-winner, six people would be affected: two parents and four grandparents.
The Chinese have a 5,000-year history of resilience, tempered by adversity. Pakistan has a 77-year-old history of insecurity, compounded by debilitating insolvency. China would lose nothing by discarding Pakistan. It has other customers in line on its One Belt, One Road initiative. Pakistan may have strategic value for China, but that interest is not open-ended. Pakistan puts its indebtedness at risk. It owes its iron brother $26 billion of debt and has $65bn committed to CPEC projects.
If a single life matters to the Chinese, a single American life, an individual chosen by over 70m US voters, will have significance for billions beyond the Atlantic and Pacific. Donald Trump has claimed the presidency. He has been mandated to decide the world’s security.
Trump is a bruised giant, with a narcissistic, insular ‘America First’ mentality. Kamala Harris’ promise to “strengthen, not abdicate” America’s global leadership cut no ice with American voters. Trump has won. Democracy has only itself to blame. Harris has lost. President Joe Biden is to blame. He (like Queen Elizabeth II) delayed in handing over the sceptre to another generation.
Nato, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, and immigrants should worry. Trump has plans for them. Trump and Russia’s Putin feel comfortable with each other. They enjoy a “very good relationship”. President Xi expects no quarter from Trump. He is ready and equipped to fight a trade and tariff war with the US and its partners.
Pakistan, however, may be forced to choose between a tired benefactor (US) and an increasingly impatient creditor (China), to whom even one life matters more than CPEC and diplomatic platitudes.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2024