According to a most quoted hadith, one should go even to China to seek knowledge. Following one part of the hadith, our military and civilian leaders have been frequently visiting China but their actions show that they learnt nothing from them. The second favourite visiting place has been Jeddah and it seems that they learnt nothing from the Saudi royals either although there is not much to learn from there. As a matter fact, they learnt their negative aspects in both cases and did not pay attention to their policy of coexistence with superpowers and their neighbours. Let us first take the most desirable place to learn, China, preached in the hadith and see what we should have learnt from them. After a long struggle led by great leader Mao Zedong, China got independence two years after Pakistan, in 1949. In the first few decades Mao Zedong cleansed Chinese society of feudalism and its culture. The Chinese government tried to provide education and health services to its citizens on a universal level. One can have reservations about Mao’s Cultural Revolution — it went too far in some respects — but at the end of the day Chinese society was prepared to shed off feudal ideology and was ready to embrace industrialisation. After Mao’s revolutionary changes, Deng Xiaoping took China in a different direction, preaching that without industrialisation, involving the capitalist system, the country cannot materialise its potential. Employing this ideological alteration, China opened its system for foreign investment and indigenous industrialisation through private initiatives. In two decades China is recognised as the second largest world economy and it will be on the top in the near future. It runs a trillion dollar trade surplus with the world’s mightiest capitalist society, the US. It is the largest creditor of the US as well. Besides socio-economic changes, China trod a very careful path when it came to relations with the world at large. Other than the 1962 war with India and skirmishes on the Russian and Vietnamese borders, it avoided armed conflicts. Taiwan, being its alienated province, is the most sensitive and sore point for China but it did not invade it, partially to avoid armed conflict with the US. China did not try to destabilise Taiwan through proxy guerrillas or through other secret operations. It did not tinker even with Hong Kong before the expiration of the 99-year British lease. In short, the Chinese reformed their society in the first phase and then focused on economic growth. These policies have lifted China nearly to the top of the world. Pakistan’s leaders have been visiting China since Mao Zedong and Chou En-Lai’s days and did not learn anything from them. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a good learner and tried a few things but he did not do the main thing China was doing: eliminate feudalism and its cultural bindings. After the Deng Xiaoping era started, every Pakistani successive government accelerated its allegiance to China but did not learn a single thing from them, i.e. to avoid conflicts and concentrate on economic growth. Only once in the 1960s did we follow China by initiating a war with India in 1965 to take back Kashmir. But in undertaking that militarily adventure, Pakistan was not as powerful as China and no match for India. This is one doubtful Chinese venture we copied without having equal resources of war-making. It proved to be an economic disaster for Pakistan to say the least. During that period we did not follow China in cleansing society of feudalism or providing universal education and healthcare. In the post-Mao era of Deng Xiaoping, our ruling elite adopted policies that were contrary to China. As China was shedding off ideological obsessions and adopting relatively open-minded policies, we started imposing a strict ideology of Islamisation. From a relatively quite open society we became suffocated and closed-minded. As China was making its utmost efforts not to indulge in any foreign conflict, Pakistan, on the US’s prompting, was jumping into the anti-Soviet Afghan war with four feet. Furthermore, while China was treating its Taiwan problem with calm and peace, making no efforts to destabilise or subvert it, Pakistan was sending mujahideen to Kashmir and Afghanistan. Once I asked a Pakistani ambassador to the US about what China is advising you and the reply was that they tell us to be calm and patient about Kashmir like they were about Taiwan. But then another Chinese intellectual told me in Shanghai that, “We look at Taiwan and other problems in the backdrop of our 5,000 years and your problem is that you look at problem with 50-60 years of historical perspective. That is the reason you guys are in such haste.” No, he did not say “you idiots”. China has prudently avoided conflicts with the US because the US is their largest goods market and the leader in investing in China. The US is the largest export market for Pakistani goods and expatriate Pakistani-Americans contribute more than 50 percent towards foreign remittances. However, unlike China, Pakistan does not base its policies on economic and other pragmatic bases; it reverts to so-called ideological sentimentalism. We have everything contrary to the Chinese approach and the results are self-evident: China has climbed to the top and Pakistan has skipped to the bottom. Pakistan has not learnt anything from the Saudis either who treat the world pragmatically. Besides allying with the US they are not hesitant to develop close ties with India. Their foreign policy is not directed or dictated by the ‘ghairat’ (honour) brigade, the mullahs or the ideological crusaders of secret agencies. We have learnt nothing from our Prophet’s (PBUH) hadith. The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com