Can we be like the Chinese?

Military men in Pakistan speak aggressively when it comes to India and its — yet unproven — interference in Balochistan. They challenge America and demand that it stops India from making mischief and gives Pakistan the nuclear deal it gave India. The recent Pak-US quarrel over an American cross-border attack has intensified the hostile rhetoric. America’s intentions in the region are described as ignoble and its war against terrorism called a cover-up for a resource grab in Central Asia.

A recent formulation ran like this: “The US strategy to control hydrocarbon resources of the Gulf and the Caspian Sea is understandable as is the strategy of containing Iran’s ability to upset Washington’s Arab and Israeli allies”. There was a time when everybody said America had come to Afghanistan to grab Central Asian and Caspian oil and gas. Can we say it today?

While bristling against America, the tendency is to praise China as a regional actor: “China is a time-tested friend; and the people of Iran and Pakistan share an intimate history. Pakistan’s and America’s perspective on China and Iran are poles apart”.

The question is: Why should we buck America, especially as we harbour terrorists that America must eliminate to feel safe at home? Our terrorists have attacked inside Iran and China too. We kill Shias ritually on Ashura and kill the Chinese on sight in Balochistan and in Fata.

As for hydrocarbons in the region and who is going for them, we need to catch up on some reading. In December 2009, China completed a crucial stretch of the 1,833-kilometre-long gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

The Turkmen pipeline — called TAPI — that was to traverse Afghanistan and Pakistan to end up in India is nowhere in sight. The Americans favoured it in order to wean India from the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline. And if India doesn’t join IPI, China will happily take most of the gas flowing in it. Chinese companies have invested $120 billion in Iran's energy sector, and $6.5 billion more in oil refineries there.

Who else has hydrocarbons in Central Asia? Kazakhstan has big oil and most of this oil will go to China under the 2005 China-Kazakhstan oil project. Could America stop China from buying oil from Iraq? China simply bid for it as the biggest buyer in a fair-and-square auction in Baghdad. A 4,000-kilometer-long Russian oil pipeline from Siberia will serve the northern cities of China. What could America do?

Obama’s energy expert, Richard Morningstar, has admitted at a congressional hearing that “the US simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia’s energy wealth”. China is the biggest investor in the mineral resources of Afghanistan while the American army sits around watching it happen. It has spent $200 million on the deepwater port at Gwadar in Balochistan. And Pakistan, while making China win the game, remains America’s ‘strategic partner’, milking more assistance from it than from China.

China handles America much better than we handle America, or for that matter, India, the other high-growth country. China doesn’t tell America the ‘home truths’ that we often feel like telling. Our top brass is kamikaze when it comes to India. China has protected the American economy from inflation through its cheap exports. It bought American security bonds to the amount that enabled President Bush to fight his Iraq war with Chinese money.

China is non-confrontational. There is nothing you can do against non-confrontational competitors. Pakistan is doing very well with its strategy of being friends with both America and China. Pakistan needs to tell nothing foolishly threatening to the Americans.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24^th, 2010.