Opinion Maker

"Ayub was a bright, clear-headed man with a progressive outlook on Islam and social issues." Khalid Hasan

By Raja G Mujtaba

Robert J. Herbold is a retired chief operating officer of Microsoft Corporation, presently the managing director of The Herbold Group, LLC and author of 'What's Holding You Back? Ten Bold Steps That Define Gutsy Leaders.' His new found company does business with China. He is a frequent visitor to China, during his last trip he did an informal comparative analysis between China and the US. His observations are nothing but commonsense and easily understood by the readers that have been reproduced below.

On his return from China, he wrote a paper, “China vs. America: Which Is the Developing Country?” published in WSJ. It is indeed a very educative and informative study. His paper took me down the memory lane, the golden period of Pakistan’s development. Based on his paper, I did a mental comparison of Ayub Khan’s era and today’s China that’s by far the leading economy and a military power based on it’s own agro-industrial productions.

Field Marshal Ayub Khan

The platform that the Chinese used is the famous “five year plan” of Ayub Khan. The Chinese development was structured and spread out over ‘five year’ plans that’s precisely the reason for their balanced and spread out economic and industrial base.

Given Ayub Khan’s faults, he was a visionary and a planer and above all a statesman. He had picked the best brains for his team who carried out his vision with dedication. Today the economic infrastructure that we see in Pakistan was planned and laid down by his team. Dams, power generation, national grid system, industrialization, regional cooperation, atomic energy, SUPARCO etc were all the fruits of his planning and vision.

Pakistan’s ‘five year’ plans were adopted by other developing countries like China, South Korea etc. They continued with the plans but post 1972 era we reversed everything and nationalized anything and everything of significance, the result was an economic chaos that ushered an era of communist style governance that scared away the business community. The capital flight and brain drain took place at a very massive scale. US dollar that was valued at Rs 4.50 shot up close to 10 rupees. Since then rupee kept on losing ground not only to dollar but is in a far miserable state in comparison to Indian and Bangladeshi currency.

Today Pakistan does not have money to manage its business, railways, PIA, steel mill, WAPDA (the government power generation authority) all are losing concerns. The lucrative projects like PTCL etc have been thrown away at no price. Pakistan Railway has come to a virtual halt whereas China is adding tracks at 3 KMs a day, building high speed trains, surmounting the inaccessible mountains like Tibet etc where the train could never be dreamt. Pakistan Railways has been lost to transport mafia but not without the connivance of the respective governments since 1972. Instead of laying new tracks, the existing ones have been dismantled and sold out as scrap.

On the education side, one good thing done by General Musharraf was the establishment of ‘Higher Education Commission’ that is being rolled back because it did not endorse the fake degrees of the honourable parliamentarians. China is not only establishing more and more Education Bodies but is actively stipulating to get its brains back from abroad to absorb them in the local setups. Pakistan governments ensure that no brain stays behind in the country to challenge their authority; they are forced to flee and migrate to look for conducive environments where they excel.

The present government that we have got is the worst in our history; the entire lot is busy in corruption and plunder. The sudden collapse of Pakistan Railways and price hike of utilities with continued shortages is all by design. Whom can we blame for getting all this trash installed over us? When we see it more focused, it’s the notorious NRO, so all those who brokered it must take the responsibility.

“Recently I flew from Los Angeles to China to attend a corporate board-of-directors meeting in Shanghai, as well as customer and government visits there and in Beijing. After the trip was over, in thinking about the United States and China, it was not clear to me which is the developed, and which is the developing, country.

Infrastructure: Let's face it, Los Angeles is decaying. Its airport is cramped and dirty, too small for the volume it tries to handle and in a state of disrepair. In contrast, the airports in Beijing and Shanghai are brand new, clean and incredibly spacious, with friendly, courteous staff galore. They are extremely well-designed to handle the large volume of air traffic needed to carry out global business these days.

In traveling the highways around Los Angeles to get to the airport, you are struck by the state of disrepair there, too. Of course, everyone knows California is bankrupt and that is probably the reason why. In contrast, the infrastructure in the major Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing is absolute state-of-the-art and relatively new.

The congestion in the two cities is similar. In China, consumers are buying 18 million cars per year compared to 11 million in the U.S. China is working hard building roads to keep up with the gigantic demand for the automobile.

The just-completed Beijing to Shanghai high-speed rail link, which takes less than five hours for the 800-mile trip, is the crown jewel of China's current 5,000 miles of rail, set to grow to 10,000 miles in 2020. Compare that to decaying Amtrak.

Government Leadership: Here the differences are staggering. In every meeting we attended, with four different customers of our company as well as representatives from four different arms of the Chinese government, our hosts began their presentation with a brief discussion of China's new five-year-plan. This is the 12th five-year plan and it was announced in March 2011. Each of these groups reminded us that the new five-year plan is primarily focused on three things: 1) improving innovation in the country; 2) making significant improvements in the environmental footprint of China; and 3) continuing to create jobs to employ large numbers of people moving from rural to urban areas. Can you imagine the U.S. Congress and president emerging with a unified five-year plan that they actually achieve (like China typically does)?

The specificity of China's goals in each element of the five-year plan is impressive. For example, China plans to cut carbon emissions by 17% by 2016. In the same time frame, China's high-tech industries are to grow to 15% of the economy from 3% today.

Government Finances: This topic is, frankly, embarrassing. China manages its economy with incredible care and is sitting on trillions of dollars of reserves. In contrast, the U.S. government has managed its financials very poorly over the years and is flirting with a Greece-like catastrophe.

Human Rights/Free Speech: In this area, our American view is that China has a ton of work to do. Their view is that we are nuts for not blocking pornography and antigovernment points-of-view from our youth and citizens.

Technology and Innovation: To give you a feel for China's determination to become globally competitive in technology innovation, let me cite some statistics from two facilities we visited. Over the last 10 years, the Institute of Biophysics, an arm of the Chinese Academy of Science, has received very significant investment by the Chinese government. Today it consists of more than 3,000 talented scientists focused on doing world-class research in areas such as protein science, and brain and cognitive sciences.

We also visited the new Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, another arm of the Chinese Academy of Science. This gigantic science and technology park is under construction and today consists of four buildings, but it will grow to over 60 buildings on a large piece of land equivalent to about a third of a square mile. It is being staffed by Ph.D.-caliber researchers. Their goal statement is fairly straightforward: 'To be a pioneer in the development of new technologies relevant to business.'

All of the various institutes being run by the Chinese Academy of Science are going to be significantly increased in size, and staffing will be aided by a new recruiting program called 'Ten Thousand Talents.' This is an effort by the Chinese government to reach out to Chinese individuals who have been trained, and currently reside, outside China. They are focusing on those who are world-class in their technical abilities, primarily at the Ph.D. level, at work in various universities and science institutes abroad. In each year of this new five-year plan, the goal is to recruit 2,000 of these individuals to return to China.

Reasons and Cure: Given all of the above, I think you can see why I pose the fundamental question: Which is the developing country and which is the developed country? The next questions are: Why is this occurring and what should the U.S. do?

Let's face it we are getting beaten because the U.S. government can't seem to make big improvements. Issues quickly get polarized, and then further polarized by the media, which needs extreme viewpoints to draw attention and increase audience size. The autocratic Chinese leadership gets things done fast (currently the autocrats seem to be highly effective).

What is the cure? Washington politicians and American voters need to snap to and realize they are getting beaten and make big changes that put the U.S. back on track: Fix the budget and the burden of entitlements; implement an aggressive five-year debt-reduction plan, and start approving some winning plans. Wake up, America!”

Today, Pakistan is placed in far worst situation because of the global designs and games being played in the region, Pakistan needs to extricate itself very carefully and manage to stand on her own feet concentrating on socio-economic development. However what Robert J. Herbold has concluded, is more applicable to Pakistan therefore I endorse the same for the people of Pakistan, ‘Wake up Pakistan!’