Steps needed to cement relationship with China

This week's visit to China by Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari offers yet another opportunity for the south Asian country to benefit from its association with the world's fastest growing economy.

And yet, suspicions linger over Pakistan's ability to achieve just that very objective at a time when it is surrounded by a number of challenges which are growing rapidly.

Zardari's visit is set to witness Pakistan requesting for and probably receiving a soft loan from China to shore up its liquid foreign currency reserves. For China, Pakistan's stability - political and economic - is vital, in order to promote its interests in the south Asian country.

Historically, China has proven itself a key and trustworthy ally of Pakistan even during periods of extreme difficulty.

The US has had a love-hate relationship with Pakistan, hovering between periods of close partnership to times of potential antagonism. In sharp contrast though, China's ties to Pakistan should be characterised more as love-love as opposed to love-hate.

For Pakistan though, the relationship with Beijing has built up historically, in large part, on issues of cooperation in China's status as a supplier of defence hardware to the country. But China's emergence as a large and robustly growing economy offers another increasingly valuable dimension.

There are up to 11 agreements of bilateral cooperation which are likely to be signed during Zardari's trip, including a number of agreements on issues of economic significance. But agreements alone will not do the trick. Pakistan needs to work aggressively and decisively on at least three fronts to improve its relations with China.

First, Pakistan must address its many internal gaps to present itself as a significantly more attractive destination for all investors, including those from China. This includes dealing with a spate of reforms from revamping the tax collection system to tackling the gaps in institutions dealing with regulations specific to investors. At the end of the day, dealing with such institutional gap must be all about the need to address issues which have discouraged a number of prospective investors in recent years from making entries into Pakistan.

Internal insecurity

Second, Pakistan must deal with the challenge of its growing internal insecurity. In recent months, the growing insecurity has essentially meant that prospective investors - domestic and foreign - have been discouraged from radically expanding their foothold in Pakistan. Unless insecurity is tackled, the future outlook will be no different than the past. This is indeed the most central issue. Insecurity is not only growing in its intensity, but is also expanding across a wider geographical horizon.

Finally, Pakistan has an opportunity to become a valuable conduit for China, linking Beijing to the oil rich Middle East. This is an aspiration that has driven Pakistan to embark upon projects such as the construction of the deep water sea port at Gwadar in southern Pakistan - a project undertaken with Chinese assistance.

In the next stage of this initiative, road and railway links have to be established across the country to facilitate the entry of Chinese goods from Pakistan's border with China's remote northern Xinjiang region. While the opportunity is great for Pakistan to become closely linked with China in promoting its economic interests, the key challenges at hand must be overcome first to make a qualitative difference to an already robust and long established relationship.

- Farhan Bokhari is a journalist based in Pakistan.