According to the British "Independent" recently reported, Pakistani Defense Minister Hevaja Asif said in an interview: Pakistan is already a defaulted "bankrupt country"! Hwaja's remarks are not alarmist, Pakistan has faced its biggest economic crisis since independence since entering 2023, and its foreign exchange reserves are no longer enough to pay off its foreign debt, which is due this month. This leads to a question worth considering: China has helped Pakistan for more than 70 years, why is Pakistan still so poor?
Pakistan was hit by widespread flooding last year
At present, Pakistan's economic situation is very serious, due to the national flood that broke out last year, which severely damaged its agriculture, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict led to an increase in the price of related materials needed for agriculture, and other reasons, its foreign exchange reserves are only about 2.9 billion US dollars, and the corresponding total amount of various loans to be repaid in February is as high as more than 6 billion US dollars. That is to say, if there is no other country to help, Pakistan will most likely default on its debt this month, and once the debt default foreign exchange reserves are exhausted, it may be like the bankruptcy of Sri Lanka last year, oil and food have no money to import, and the country is in danger of falling into turmoil.
As China's "iron brother", Pakistan is affectionately called "Pakistan Rail" by Chinese netizens, the two countries have always maintained close national friendship since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1951, China has helped Pakistan in an all-round way in the fields of economy, military, diplomacy and infrastructure construction for more than 70 years. For example, during the Indo-Pakistani War, the Pakistani military urgently needed tanks to ask China for help, because the factory took time to receive orders for production, at that time China directly transferred a batch of tanks from the active force to deliver to Pakistan for emergency response, which shows the relationship between the two countries.
China-Pakistan pilot exchange
Not only in the military aspect, for more than 70 years, China has vigorously assisted Pakistan in the fields of economy and people's livelihood, such as roads, railways, power stations, water conservancy projects and so on. In particular, the world-famous China-Pakistan Highway, although the total length is only 1032 kilometers, but due to its special alpine terrain, it is difficult to build and cost the most money in the world. According to the engineer of the China-Pakistan Highway, the construction difficulty is even more than ten times that of the 318 highway on the Tibetan plateau, and in the process of road construction, a total of about 700 people from both sides have sacrificed their precious lives...
So after so many years, with China as its backing, why has Pakistan failed to get rich? In fact, this is really not to blame others, first of all, to make it clear to everyone, China's aid to Pakistan is by no means the kind of unlimited aid, after all, we are still a developing country. Our assistance is "it is better to teach them to fish than to teach them to fish", and to help them build infrastructure, Pakistan is poor for three main reasons: First, the country's economy is mainly agricultural, about half of the country's people are engaged in agriculture for a living, 60% of the population lives in rural areas, and there is not enough food to eat, and a large amount of food is imported every year. I believe everyone understands this well - how much money can you earn by farming! Why doesn't Pakistan develop industry and bring in foreign investment? This brings us to the following important reasons.
The staff shuttle bus of the China-aided construction of Pakistan's Na hydropower station was attacked by terrorism, killing six Singaporeans
The second reason is that Pakistan's security problems have not been solved, because it is bordered by Afghanistan to the north and India to the south, and Pakistan is distributed with Pakistani terrorist forces (the Pakistani Taliban, which is not the same thing as the Afghan Taliban), India-backed separatist forces, and so on. Not to mention attracting foreign investment, Pakistan cannot even guarantee the safety of the employees of the Chinese companies it has assisted, and in recent years there have been many attacks on Chinese aid to Pakistani employees and staff in Pakistan, resulting in the death of many Chinese. Under such circumstances, what other foreign capital dares to invest in Pakistan? How else to develop the industrial economy?
The third reason is the relationship with India, the Indian army is the second only to the armed forces of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in the past few years, its sea, land and air are constantly equipped with the most advanced international fighters, warships and main battle tanks, the most India's old enemy, Pakistan naturally can not sit idly by, but advanced fighters and warships and tanks need real money to exchange ah! An advanced destroyer of a Western country can easily cost more than $1 billion, an advanced fighter aircraft costs tens of millions of dollars, and a main battle tank costs millions of dollars. Although China has helped and tried to equip Chinese weapons with high quality and low price, even if Chinese weapons are cheap and costly, others 1 billion we 500 million, others 50 million we 10 million, others 3 million we 1.5 million, that is also very expensive. Every year, Pakistan spends huge sums of money on army building, which is also obviously a drag on its economic development.
China's tailor-made Thunder Dragon fighter for Pakistan
I hope that Pakistan will get out of the economic predicament as soon as possible, but even if China helps, it can not help for a while, and in the final analysis, it has to fight for its own breath.