According to Xinhua News Agency in Islamabad on December 14, Pakistani Minister of Planning, Development, and Special Projects Ahsan Iqbal stated on the 13th that the achievements of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are a symbol of the joint efforts and success created by the peoples of both countries and a monument of friendship. He also said that the CPEC has made significant contributions to Pakistan’s economic and social development, and he thanked the builders of both countries for their hard work — but is this really the case? First, let’s look at the current situation in Pakistan. In the case of Peshawar, almost all goods are Chinese products, mainly electronics. According to VOA, the strategic Kalakano Market in Peshawar spans thirty-five blocks, with over a hundred shops in each block. The products offered there include hardware, electronics, kitchenware, pottery, watches, dried fruits, clothing, and ready-made garments, most of which are made in China.
Not only that, according to the report, this trend is also very obvious in various parts of Pakistan, such as Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where major markets are flooded with cheap Chinese goods. Walking through shops in Sindh and Punjab, one sees all kinds of Chinese products. Secondly, let’s look at the situation of Pakistan’s indigenous industrial and commercial enterprises. The uncontrolled influx of Chinese goods has caused many Pakistani businesses to go bankrupt and countless workers to lose their jobs. Muhammad Ishaq, former member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Trade and Industry Committee, said: “The cost of doing business in China is relatively low. This is mainly because Chinese spend less on natural gas, electricity, raw materials, and transportation. This provides a buffer for them to export goods at lower prices.” Ishaq revealed that Chinese consumer goods flooding the local market have brought great difficulties to Pakistani manufacturers. “The market is flooded with low-priced, high-quality Chinese products, causing expensive, lower-quality Pakistani products to gradually lose their market space. In Punjab and Sindh, this situation has already forced dozens of factories to close, and hundreds of workers to become unemployed.” China mainly exports electronic and mechanical products to Pakistan, accounting for 42.7%, while imports from Pakistan mainly consist of mineral and metal raw materials, accounting for over 55%. From this, it is clear that China’s exports to Pakistan are almost entirely industrial products, while imports from Pakistan are mostly raw industrial materials. This is because Pakistan’s productivity is underdeveloped, not only technologically but also in circulation costs, making its industrial products expensive domestically. However, China’s high industrial labor productivity means that the necessary labor time for producing industrial products is far lower than Pakistan’s social necessary labor time. As a result, China can dump industrial products in Pakistan to exchange for large amounts of raw materials, engaging in an unequal exchange. This kind of trade is precisely the economic monopoly of imperialist countries over colonies, where colonies serve as raw material sources and sales markets for imperialist countries, enabling them to maintain monopoly prices, buy raw materials at low prices, and sell goods at high prices! From this, it is not hard to see that the so-called “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor” only brings disaster to Pakistan — a thorough imperialist dumping of goods on colonies! This is not free trade; Pakistan’s only trade freedom is the freedom to allow Chinese imperialist goods to be exported. This is because after the rise of the Chinese revisionist traitor group, socialist China, which once aided global revolution, has turned into an imperialist China engaged in colonization and invasion everywhere. The Chinese revisionist traitor group, on one hand, wildly expands production, and on the other hand, intensifies the exploitation of Chinese workers, leading to massive overproduction domestically. As a result, economic crises are inevitable, because the fundamental contradiction of capitalism manifests as blind expansion of production and the shrinking purchasing power of the working people. For example, shopping festivals like Singles’ Day, once heavily promoted by the Chinese revisionist traitors, are now declining year after year. This is because the purpose of capitalist production is not to satisfy people’s lives but to maximize profits for capitalists! Therefore, not only to shift crises but also to expand profits, surplus products are inevitably dumped into colonies. According to the Chinese revisionist traitors’ own admission, they have been running trade surpluses with Pakistan year after year, and the trade deficit is further expanding! According to Huajing Industry Research Institute data: From January to October 2024, China’s total exports to Pakistan amounted to 16.088 billion USD, an increase of 1.833 billion USD over the same period last year, a year-on-year growth of 13.1%; China’s total imports from Pakistan were 2.211 billion USD, a decrease of 610 million USD compared to the same period last year, a decline of 21.3%. From January to October 2024, China’s trade surplus with Pakistan was 13.877 billion USD, with a trade surplus of 124.4 thousand USD in October 2024, and a trade surplus of 11.434 billion USD from January to October 2023. This is simply shocking! Currently, Pakistan’s inflation rate hovers around 30%, nearly 40% of the population lives below the poverty line, and the debt-to-GDP ratio has risen to 72%. Unemployment in Pakistan has also reached alarming levels, with the official unemployment rate soaring to a record high of 8.5%, pushing an additional 8.4 to 9.1 million people into poverty. Under such circumstances, the comprador puppets of Pakistan can shamelessly claim that “the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has changed the fate of countless families and provided valuable career opportunities for countless Pakistani youth” — shameless lies! These comprador puppets live in large villas, while the poor Pakistani people can only squeeze into slums. For example, the comprador class’s boastful “Garden City” — Pakistan’s second-largest city, Lahore — does not belong to the Pakistani people. They can only dwell in overcrowded slums on the outskirts, known as “Tent City,” which is also the destination for many poor people in other parts of Pakistan. The impoverished residents here live in miserable conditions, in shacks surrounded by garbage, exposed to wind and rain, with sewage and trash in the rivers, and living environments so filthy that children pick up rotten fruits on the roadside, and people survive by cooking discarded animal skins and offal. Some homeless sleep directly on the roadside where cars whiz by. Meanwhile, the comprador puppets and speculators in Pakistan all live in large villas in the city center. In Islamabad, the capital, private bodyguards, armed guards, luxury cars, and mansions are everywhere. When the impoverished residents of Tent City are barely able to survive, the wealthy live a life of extravagance, riding horses, hunting, and throwing parties. According to a July 26 report from Nikkei Asia Review, at the Karachi port, Javed Iqbal, who unloads ships, said he used to earn about 15,000 Pakistani rupees (about 441 RMB) per month. However, due to the Pakistani government banning luxury imports to save foreign exchange, only one ship arrived at the port last month, and his monthly income plummeted to 1,500 rupees (about 44.1 RMB), an amount barely enough to buy two liters of cooking oil. “Today we are eating boiled potatoes because cooking oil is too expensive,” said Iqbal’s sister, Bano Begum. The World Bank’s poverty line for low- and middle-income economies is a daily living expense of less than $3.20 (about 21.6 RMB), and Iqbal is just one of thousands of impoverished Pakistanis. Karachi economist Asif Haider Soomro pointed out the harsh reality faced by Pakistan’s impoverished class: since most income is spent on food, energy, utilities, and transportation, “the purchasing power of low-income groups has decreased by 30% to 40%… They have no choice but to borrow, drop their children out of school, and work to support their families.” In an interview with VOA, Abdul Waheed, a local garden furniture merchant, said that rising food prices have greatly reduced people’s disposable income, forcing them to prioritize essential foods and avoid unnecessary shopping to save costs. Waheed also said they cannot compete with China because Chinese have advanced manufacturing technology and lower input costs. Pakistan’s economic situation is very severe, with rapidly depleting reserves, soaring food and overall inflation rates, and serious debt repayment problems due to declining foreign exchange reserves. As of the end of June this year, Pakistan faced $24.6 billion in external debt repayments, most of which was owed to China. The Chinese revisionist state councilor and foreign minister Qin Gang shamelessly boasted that China is Pakistan’s “good neighbor,” “good friend,” and “good partner”; that it helps Pakistan develop its economy, improve people’s livelihoods, and accelerate national development. There is no debt trap, but real construction with real money. However, Pakistan’s current situation is a never-ending debt crisis, with the IMF providing $7 billion in financing to repay Chinese debts, and this being the twenty-fifth time! Old debts are unpaid, and new debts are added, creating an endless cycle of debt repayment. This inevitably reminds one of the tragedies of late Qing and Republican China’s modern history. Imperialist powers plundered China’s raw materials, destroyed the development of national industry and commerce, and supported comprador puppet regimes, leading to scenes of people living in dire straits and the nation facing life-and-death crises. Isn’t this scene being replayed in today’s Pakistan? The three mountains once pressing down on the Chinese people — now weigh on the Pakistani people. However, brave Pakistani people are rising up in resistance. The nationalist liberation organization, Baloch Liberation Army, is mercilessly fighting against the Chinese revisionist vampires, tearing down railways, destroying Confucius Institutes, and fighting against the “Economic Corridor Security Forces,” showing the spirit of the Boxer Rebellion that struck imperialist powers a hundred years ago. Like the Chinese people before, the Pakistani people will inevitably overthrow the three mountains pressing on their heads! The traitorous Chinese revisionist group, which forgets its ancestors, will also be buried in the people’s anger, just like its predecessors! 巴基斯坦官员赞誉中巴经济走廊建设成果_新闻频道_央视网(cctv.com) 中国过剩商品涌入巴基斯坦 给当地市场和产业造成巨大压力 https://www.huaon.com/channel/tradedata/1038484.html 巴基斯坦：有希望胜选者竞相扭转陷入困境的经济 | 经济 新闻 | 半岛电视台
In fact, circulation costs and social necessary labor time are not necessarily related; this is a misconception.
The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private ownership of the means of production, not that. Moreover, that contradiction should be between the trend of the unlimited expansion of capitalist production scale and the continuous reduction of consumer purchasing power of the working people as the main body, which has nothing to do with “blind expansion.”
Why is the Baloch Liberation Army considered a “national bourgeoisie liberation struggle organization”?
Indeed, I only thought of the fact that the article mentioned that Zhongxiu has much lower circulation costs than Pakistan, and circulation costs are indeed an important part of capital reproduction. So I added it, but I didn’t consider its relation to social necessary labor time.
He is indeed a revisionist organization resisting imperialist colonial invasion. However, there is no evidence to prove that they are proletariat, and their relationship with the American imperialists is also questionable, so it is more appropriate to consider them as the national bourgeoisie.
But this is just my opinion; if there is any mistake, please correct me.
2 Likes
Isn’t the contradiction between socialized production and private ownership of the means of production the fundamental contradiction of capitalism? That’s what I saw when I was looking at the materials before.
Blind expansion refers to the unlimited expansion of production, with the gradually shrinking ability to pay, which is the trend of the constantly shrinking consumption capacity. I feel it’s just a difference in wording, but the meaning expressed is the same.
Different, the trend of unlimited expansion is not necessarily related to blind expansion. The former indicates that the nature of capitalism determines that it must continuously expand its production scale, while the latter is purely a subjective matter related to the individual will of the bourgeoisie.
I see, I’ve noted it down
After the start of a new round of China-U.S. trade war, the internally and externally troubled Chinese imperialism will only further shift the crisis onto the people of third-world countries. In a few years, the people of third-world countries like Pakistan will only live more miserable lives.
1 Like