Opinion | Why has Pakistan been left out of China and East Asia’s economic development boom?

Name: Kenya opens massive US$1.5 billion railway project funded and built by China
Uploaded: 2020-07-10T23:00:11.000Z
Duration: 2 min 9 s
Description: Kenya opens massive US$1.5 billion railway project funded and built by China

Despite Southeast Asia and China’s astonishing development story, some parts of the world have not shared in that inspiring progress

Constant conflict, the influence of radical Islam, ferocious local politics and challenging conditions have combined to impede Pakistan’s development

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Traders and customers gather at a crowded vegetable market in Peshawar, Pakistan, on April 2 during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against Covid-19. While Pakistan’s population has almost quadrupled since 1970, its economic growth has not kept pace and fallen far behind many economies in East Asia. Photo: AFP

David Dodwell

Published: 7:00am, 11 Jul 2020Updated: 7:14am, 11 Jul 2020

This weekend exactly 50 years ago, I walked for a final time out of University Public School into the blinding Peshawar sunlight after a year as a gap-year teacher in what was then called the North-West Frontier Province, tucked under the Khyber Pass leading from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

Whether I made a difference to the lives of my 30-odd students – several had been killed during the year in local feuds – I never discovered, but my life had been transformed. Plans to study English and history at university were turned on their head midway through my immersion in Pakistan.

Instead, I reapplied to study social anthropology and development economics. My simplistic Christian views over how communities set rules over good and bad behaviour crashed and burned in the humble mud-built homes of local Muslims. The crude and complete confinement of women made me appreciate the freedoms and opportunities facing my three younger sisters back home.

Many back in Britain thought I was crazy to disappear to Pakistan and were alarmed at my decision to study something as esoteric as social anthropology and development economics. In truth, I, too, did not clearly know what possible relevance such a combination of study might have to my future life and career.

As it turned out, it could not have been more relevant. It paved the way for a 40-year journalistic career focused on Asia, and in particular China. It meant immersing in cultures most of my schoolmates never discovered and wrestling with development challenges across Asia that few mainstream economists were adequately equipped to analyse.

02:09

Kenya opens massive US$1.5 billion railway project funded and built by China

By 19, I had learned one of life’s most important lessons: no matter how meticulously you or your parents strive to plan your life, you are doomed to stumble. The single most important force in our lives is chance – the influence of random, accidental events that suddenly and unpredictably transform your life and steer it in unimaginable directions.