Daily Times

The Trump administration has clearly decided to do everything possible to contain China, right to the last moment before the election, in the hope of winning and picking up right where it left things. Now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on his way to India once again next week to strengthen “critical relationships.” The idea no doubt is to try and build a fence around China’s growing economic and military might before it gets too strong. And it works just fine for everybody that the trip comes at a particularly helpful time for India. It has just been humiliated by Chinese forces on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and, unable to carry its own burden in the border dispute, needs all the help it can get.

Yet both Washington and Delhi might be in for a rather rude awakening. For they will soon find out that even if it was a good idea to join hands and surround China, this is not the right time for it. This is perhaps the only time in recorded history that the entire world is registering below zero growth; with the exception of just one country – China. All this is because of the out-of-control pandemic and the lockdowns that it forced, of course, but China’s miniscule growth still stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world.

What is more, Beijing has used the momentum of this growth, even though it is not much, to forge new trade partnerships across the region and beyond. And anybody who doubted its ability to revitalise its export machinery needs only to take one look at how its production houses are doing to realise how wrong they were. The Chinese are a very resilient nation. They proved it with their relentless fight against the pandemic and again with the way they rebuilt their economy so quickly after it. Pakistan is in the ideal position of partnering so closely with it. And it goes to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s credit that he very openly said that everybody should realise that Islamabad and Beijing are now forever tied and moving in the same direction. The coming US-India exchanges, and expected landmark deals, will therefore be watched very closely. *