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【南亚研究】李红梅:What Trump`s Pakistan Policy Means for China

2018-04-21 外交学者 国关国政外交学人
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学人简介

Li Hongmei is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of International Relations and  Public Affairs, Fudan University,  Shanghai, China, and a Visiting Scholar at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC.

From last August of last year to the present, relations between Pakistan and the United States have continued to deteriorate. On January 4, the U.S Department of State confirmed it would suspend $255 million in military assistance to Pakistan. On the same day, in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the secretary of state placed Pakistan on a Special Watch List for severe violations of religious freedom.


On January 8, the U.S Department of Defense announced it had suspended $900 million in assistance for Pakistan, which has been authorized as Coalition Support Funds (CSF) for fiscal year 2017. At the end of February, the United States urged the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to put Pakistan on a terrorism financing watch list.


As Pakistan’s “all-weather” friend, what are the implication of declining Pakistan-U.S relations for China? I argue that there will be negative effects for China in the following three aspects.


1. China will face more pressure to promote Pakistan’s economic development

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the erosion of macroeconomic resilience puts Pakistan’s economic outlook at risk. The fiscal deficit is expected to come in at 5.5 percent of GDP in FY 2017/2018, with its real GDP growth predicted at 5.6 percent (thanks to investments related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor). What’s worse, thanks to U.S. pressure, Pakistan is expected to be put back on the FATF watch list of in May, which means Pakistan will be recognized as a terror-financing country. That will be a blow to its economy, as Pakistani access to the international financial market, especially getting loans from the IMF, World Bank, and other countries, will become more difficult.


In addition, the deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations may also affect economic and development assistance from other Western countries and international institutions. According to Professor Joshua Whit of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, the United States can make use of its influence in international financial organizations to pressure Pakistan. The United States has a strong voice in both the World Bank and Asia Development Bank, for instance. Islamabad will be isolated by the international community under the U.S. campaign, so China may face more pressure to promote Pakistan’s economic development.


Two points here are worth attention from China. First, Beijing must make sure all groups within Pakistan benefit from CPEC. If other economic options dry up, Pakistanis may focus more on CPEC and raise their expectations toward it. If certain groups, especially local Baloch people, don’t see their lives improved by CPEC, this could easily cause dissatisfaction from the public and they will have a low opinion of the initiative.


Second, Pakistan’s continued high debt levels may be unfairly blamed on China and ruin China’s image in Pakistan, especially with increasing worries about Pakistan’s debt from other countries. In fact, Pakistan’s high debt issue has accumulated over a long period and is not the result of CPEC. In FY 2011, the total debt and liability stood at about 70 percent of GDP, which has risen to 78.8 percent of GDP in FY 2017. Among this, external debt is 27.5 percent of GDP, which hit a record high of $85 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2017

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