Daily Times

There is no bigger indictment of America’s recent foreign policy towards China than a growing consensus that the latter’s economy would grow bigger than the former’s by 2028, five years earlier than previously thought because of the difference in the two countries’ recovery from the coronavirus. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) already put China ahead of America in terms of the real size of the economy, but now a prominent think tank called the Centre for Economics and Business Research has also said in its annual publication that China would surely leapfrog ahead of the United States before the new decade is out.

The report attributes this trend to China’s “skillful management of the pandemic” as opposed to the haphazard approach employed by the US largely because of President Trump’s personal lack of understanding of the kind of challenges that were presenting themselves. Now not only is the US economy in the kind of recession that it hasn’t witnessed in a rather long time but the US dollar’s reserve currency status, which has helped cement America’s sole superpower status for more than half a century, is also in danger. All China needs to do now is stay on track and not get distracted by all the needless confrontation that Washington seemed so obsessed with while Donald Trump was in office.

This development would have been greeted with wide smiles in Islamabad, no doubt. For not only is Pakistan one of China’s all-weather friends, but the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a very essential component of Beijing’ Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which it puts above everything else on its priority list; and with very good reason. Pakistan also relies very heavily on China for financial help. Indeed just this past week the Chinese helped us once again with emergency financing to pay back one of our more pressing loans to Saudi Arabia. Now, Islamabad needs to upgrade this relationship and work out ways to deepen the economic and commercial part of it. We must work on ways to speed up bilateral programs like currency swaps, etc, which will enable us to trade in our own local currencies instead of forever relying on the dwindling US dollar. And we must increase our mutual trade yet more. Pakistan must display the good sense needed to walk alongside the world’s most formidable economic giant. *