Creation: Political Economy Group of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association
Recently, Pakistan signed an agreement with China to export donkey skins to China. Pakistan plans to export about 200,000 donkeys’ meat and skins to China annually. The main reason for China’s import of a large number of donkeys from Pakistan, besides for consumption, is to produce a traditional Chinese medicine called Ejiao. Due to propaganda and hype by domestic bourgeoisie, the price of Ejiao has skyrocketed 30 times over the past decade, rising from 100 yuan per 500 grams to 2,986 yuan per gram. The market size of Ejiao has also continuously expanded; in 2012, China’s Ejiao industry was only worth 7.5 billion yuan, but by 2021, it had grown to approximately 42.7 billion yuan, and by 2025, the market size is expected to surpass 60 billion yuan. The booming Ejiao industry has caused the domestic donkey population to sharply decline, dropping from 5.101 million in 2010 to 2.3243 million in 2020, a decrease of 54.44%, and further down to 1.7354 million in 2021. Since the domestic donkey population can no longer meet the development needs of the Ejiao industry, the bourgeoisie of China’s revisionist regime has turned its gaze abroad, beginning to import large quantities of donkeys from Pakistan.
However, as a colonial territory of China’s revisionist regime, Pakistan’s domestic agricultural economy still occupies a major sector and is highly dependent on donkeys for cargo transportation and agricultural production. Donkeys are often used for long-distance transport of goods, carrying household necessities, and helping to plow fields. They play a vital role in the survival of many impoverished Pakistanis; in the work of transporting people and goods, donkeys account for 95% of the total livestock in Pakistan. Most peasant families still rely on these animals for farming and income. The large-scale import of donkeys from Pakistan by China’s revisionist regime inevitably involves seizing donkeys from the Pakistani people, separating them from Pakistani farmers and transport workers. This will severely affect their livelihoods, leaving Pakistani farmers without livestock for farming, and transport workers may lose their jobs due to the loss of donkey carts. However, the Pakistani government not only refuses to ban donkey exports but also allows Chinese revisionist companies to establish slaughterhouses in Karachi and Gwadar port cities, where donkeys are slaughtered and processed locally before being exported to China, exceeding the official estimate of over 200,000 donkeys annually. Pakistani officials even falsely claim that this will not lead to a shortage of donkeys in Pakistan because the country has decided to establish a donkey breeding chain to maintain their numbers. Even at the cost of sacrificing the production and survival needs of the Pakistani people, they still sell donkeys to China’s revisionist regime, exposing their treacherous and sellout nature. Meanwhile, China’s revisionist regime, on one hand, plunders donkey skins from abroad, and on the other hand, domestically, most Ejiao products are made from cowhide, horsehide, or industrial gelatin, which are fake Ejiao. These fake products are not only very expensive but may also pose life-threatening risks to consumers. The Pakistani people have lost their vital donkeys, and the domestic people may also be harmed by consuming fake Ejiao. In this entire process, only China’s revisionist bourgeoisie profits immensely, while what is being cooked up is not Ejiao, but the blood and sweat of the working people.