Pakistan Becoming A Branch Office Of China ?
Mother China: A ‘Chinese Revolution’ Sweeps Across Pakistan By Nasir Jamal
Like many love affairs, the one between China and Pakistan is made of unrealistic expectations – mostly among Pakistanis – and a hard-nosed pursuit of strategic goals and political and economic objective — mostly by the Chinese.
Pakistanis first "used" USA as an ally against India; when that did not work, it is slowly "switching" towards China; but the rub here is that the Chinese "uncle" is not rich as the US "uncle", therefore they cannot indulge them with toys and gifts !
It is quite late in the night but Rawalpindi’s China Market is still swarming with customers. An array of shops in narrow alleys selling imported Chinese goods next to the bustling Raja Bazaar, the market is stuffed with all kinds of merchandise, leaving little space for the tired customers to move around. “Be careful; you may break the vase. It is expensive,” a salesman in a crockery shop warns a little girl trying to feel the smooth surface of a vessel on display.
At another shop, a woman is haggling over the price of what looks like a Versace handbag. She knows it is a copy – a good one though – and wants the shopkeeper to give her a hefty discount on it. “You are demanding a lot of money for a copy,” she politely reproaches the man at the counter who reminds her that it is a “first” copy and not just an “ordinary” bag. But then he agrees to give her a handsome discount.
Able to buy copies of branded luxury goods which look as good as the originals, and at prices that are within the shopping budgets of most middle-class households across Pakistan, customers in the country have much to thank traders in China Market for. “The best thing about these goods is that our middle-class people can now afford to live in style,” says Noshad Sheikh who runs a shop at China Market. “[Shopkeepers selling these goods have] brought international brands within the reach of local customers who, otherwise, would see those brands only in movies and on television shows,” he says. “Of course, I am talking about copies and not the original products,” he adds with a smile.
Due to globalization, (the flip side of "World Ummahism" ) consumerism is making its inroads in Islamic Pakistan; wonder what the Islamic/Mullah Brigade have to say on this ; the Saudi society seems to have embraced consumerism with a vengeance - Islamic carpets, Islamic compasses, Halal Chocolates etc etc
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China’s arrival on the scene has allowed even small-scale traders to go abroad and purchase their merchandise first-hand: visas are easy to get, expenses for travel and boarding and lodging are not as big as they would be for European or American destinations and goods in demand back home are dirt cheap when purchased in bulk in China.
How have ‘Made in China’ products become so easily available all over Pakistan and at prices that almost everyone can afford?
The answers lie in a free trade agreement (FTA) that came into effect between China and Pakistan in July 2007.
The "Chinese Trojan Horse"?
At first glance, Peshawar’s Karkhano Bazaar would appear to be just another market in Pakistan where, in the first half of the day, the number of parked cars far exceeds the number of buyers ...
Karkhano Bazaar has long served as a gateway to Pakistan for anything that the world produced but was not allowed into the country through legal routes — from sturdy German appliances to no-frills-attached Soviet products. The latest goods to flood the bazaar come from China. The television set that you have just purchased, after a long and twisted tour of shops overflowing with merchandise, is sold to
you as a Japanese product but, on closer scrutiny, may turn out to be made in China. (Taqqiya in business practice? ) The toys dangling out of the shopfronts are all Chinese manufactured as is so much else within your sight: cosmetics, toiletries, blankets, loose cloth, musical instruments, watches, shoes, crockery, ceramic tiles, vases and many other things.
Durability is the word most commonly heard as prospective buyers sift through goods and haggle over prices. “Why doesn’t China send us products it sells to countries likes the United States?” is a common refrain. That Chinese goods do not last long is a universal complaint among Pakistanis who miss Western appliances well known for their robust structures.
China is known world wide for selling "junk goods"
The other difference between the products from these two parts of the world is how they make their way into Pakistan: the Western goods were mostly smuggled; the Chinese ones are imported under a legal trade regime. Pakistan has been trading with the People’s Republic of China since 1949, but the first serious attempt to boost economic and commercial cooperation was made in 1963...
Analysts attribute this sluggish growth to the nature of the Chinese economy rather than to any Pakistan-specific factors.
So, the Pakis are wrong to assume that the Chini-blothers are doing them a favour !
The Chinese, too, did not show much enthusiasm for increasing trade links with Pakistan because they were focused on wealthy consumers in bigger and high-growth economies. “A slow-growing economy like Pakistan, which produced little or nothing needed by Chinese manufacturers and consumers, didn’t offer much to Chinese businesses with large economies of scale. The size of the Pakistani consumer market was also not big enough to attract Chinese manufacturers who produce and export at a mass level,” stresses businessman Khan.
The hard nosed Chini businessman ! Pakis should keep their eyes open and their wallets closed vis-a-vis the so-called "CPEC game changer"
Given these factors, the influx of Chinese goods into the Pakistani market during the last decade and a half has been spectacular. From a few hundred million US dollars in 2000, the value of bilateral trade grew to around 16 billion US dollars last year — though tilted heavily in China’s favour. Even before the two countries signed the FTA in July 2007, the value of their bilateral trade had already increased to almost 7 billion US dollars. After the FTA became operational, that value surged further and reached 14 billion US dollars in 2013, making China Pakistan’s biggest trade partner. The two governments expect the value of bilateral trade to reach 20 billion US dollars by 2020 but analysts like Malik say it could rise faster than “we can now imagine”.
Prominent businessmen in Lahore claim they had to raise alarm about the negative impacts of such smuggled goods on Pakistani trade and industry before the government took note. One of the people at the forefront of those protestations was Anjum Nisar who runs chemical manufacturing, leather and other businesses in Lahore. Some of his enterprises were under serious threat from smuggled Chinese goods. “It was only after Pakistani businessmen started making noise about the smuggling of Chinese goods that the government secured its borders,” he says.
Many businesspeople in Pakistan may now be ruing the result of those efforts. Instead of providing the protection they were seeking, the tightening of borders increased the volume of Chinese goods entering Pakistan — this time through legal and official channels. “[Official] bilateral trade thus began to increase quickly in the early 2000s,” says Nisar.
All this dependence on Chini goods ; what this will do to the local manufacturing industry is anyone's guess ; for all practical purposes, Pakistan is now becoming a
Branch Office Of China !
The FTA has brought down import taxes on both sides of the Pakistan-China border and removed many non-tax barriers which, in the past, disallowed bilateral trade in certain goods and commodities. This has led to a deluge: from high-end electronics to low-end toys, from replicas of art pieces to handbags, from sanitary-ware to shoes and sunglasses, from cell phone accessories to kitchenware, Chinese consumer goods are ubiquitous in Pakistani markets. Large malls and markets ‘specialising’ in Chinese products have come up in almost every big city in the country, Rawalpindi’s China Market being just one of them.
But it is perhaps the busiest place to buy everything Chinese. “Now the customers do not have to travel all the way from Lahore or Faisalabad to Peshawar to buy ‘imported’ Chinese goods to decorate their homes or shop for their daughters’ dowries,” says Sheikh, the China Market trader.
Has the "halal" factor been factored in all this by the Mullah/ Islamic brigade - just wondering
A Karachi-based tile manufacturer, who does not want to be mentioned by name, believes Chinese tile manufacturers and their Pakistani importers are doing something unlawful to ensure that the prices of their merchandise continue to drop. All cost indicators, such as wages and transportation charges, are going up in China, but surprisingly the import trade price of Chinese tiles is still going down in Pakistan, he says. “The import trade price of Chinese tiles came down from 4.57 US dollars per square metre in 2011 to 2.51 US dollars per square metre in 2013.” How that has become possible is a mystery for trade authorities in Pakistan to resolve. Local tile manufacturers, in the meanwhile, chafe under its negative impact. “The 40-billion-rupee local tile manufacturing industry is suffering losses and teetering on the brink of closure,” the manufacturer claims.
The Chini- Trojan Horse syndrome !
The expected direct Chinese investments in the post-FTA period have also not materialised — not at least so far.
Apart from China Mobile that operates in Pakistan as Zong, no other Chinese company has made any significant investment in Pakistan since 2007. Beijing also went back on its commitment to give tariff concessions to Pakistani textiles and fish exports in the first five years of the agreement’s operation. The hard-nosed approach of the Chinese businessmen again !The effects of under-invoicing are dire for many industries in Pakistan — tyre manufacturers being among the most affected. “We could be a 25-billion rupees company – almost triple our present size – in a matter of very short time, if the government pulls the plug on under-invoiced imports of tyres from China,” says an executive of the 50-year-old General Tyre Company. The data seems to prove him right: almost 55% of all the tyres being imported into Pakistan come from China; they are under-invoiced almost by 40%.
Like many love affairs, the one between China and Pakistan is made of unrealistic expectations – mostly among Pakistanis – and a hard-nosed pursuit of strategic goals and political and economic objective — mostly by the Chinese. The language of this love affair, however, is such that it raises more expectations than it encourages a sober analysis of the ground realities — “higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the sea and sweeter than honey” are the most common phrases to describe this more than six-decade-old “all-weather friendship”.
According to PCI-collected data, more Pakistanis are studying in China than they are in the US. “The number of Pakistani students studying medicine, engineering and other subjects in China has gone up to about 10,000; this is higher than the number of Pakistani students in the US,” says PCI’s executive director Mustafa Haider Sayed. “Similarly, more Chinese are travelling to Pakistan for work, studies and tourism than they ever did in the past. At the International Islamic University Islamabad alone, there are now 200 to 300 Chinese students,” he tells the Herald. Yet, as diplomat Khan acknowledges, the two sides “need to work more vigorously in the area of people-to-people contacts” if the extent of their diplomatic, political, economic and military relations is to be reflected in how people in the two countries view, and treat, each other.
Mohammad Arif, the Beijing-based editor of Nihao-Salam, a bilingual e-magazine that promotes cultural interaction between Pakistan and China, blames Pakistani authorities for slow progress on people-to-people contacts. This, he says, is due to excessive focus among Pakistani policymakers on military and political relations. “All the programmes in recent years to promote cultural interaction between the two sides were initiated by China,” he says.
There is a lot of speculation in the media that promises being made by the Chinese government and businesses for investment in Pakistan, specifically through the CPEC and related projects, are a sort of bribe to make Pakistan do more against the ETIM. Senator Sayed does not agree with that. He believes China is already getting unconditional help from Pakistan as far as fighting against terrorism in Xinjiang is concerned. “Why would China throw so much money at Pakistan to get what it already has?” he asks and adds that counterterrorism cooperation between the two sides has been going on smoothly for well over a decade now. “The two armies have been conducting joint antiterrorism exercises since the early 2000s and the Inter-Services Intelligence has been sharing counterterrorism information with the authorities in Beijing on a regular basis.”
For Sayed, increasing the Chinese footprint in Pakistan is neither meant to influence Pakistan’s defence and foreign policies nor is it a bribe or reward to do Beijing’s dirty work of fighting off anti-China elements. It is a vote of confidence in Pakistan’s future, he says. “It says that China will not let Pakistan fail. It means we are in good company.”
