If you want to read about the author's take on Gwadar, please check out the article she wrote for FP last month, "Pakistan's Black Pearl":

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/03/pakistan_s_black_pearl

There doesn't seem to be anything in the author's analysis that belittles Pakistan. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has two options in terms of ally of choice. The author is simply showing that for Pakistan China is not a replacement for the United States, at least not at the moment.

Offering opinion based on fact is called analysis. Discrediting and denoucing opinions you don't like is propaganda.

...for China, it appears, rather than the devil.

What you say about India is baldly racist and myopic; plenty of commentators once said the same thing about China, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was the real "sick man" of Asia while Japan became a world power and India was the major outpost of the British Empire.

"China is where the future is in education, manufacturing, engineering, medicine and innnovation."

Not really. China's education system is subpar by almost any metric other than meaningless rote-learning and memorization. Its manufacturing sector is shrinking as countries like Vietnam expand more aggressively into industry, while countries like Mexico and even the US itself are capitalizing on growing reticence toward lengthy supply lines (read: shipping items across the Pacific Ocean while fuel prices are surging). Most engineers trained in China would not qualify as so if measured by the more rigorous standards of the West. China's medical system is decades behind the industrialized world, and none of the high-precision, cutting-edge medical equipment is manufactured in China.

25-30 years from now, when India has a much larger and younger population than China, buttressed by a stronger civil society than China will ever form under its current regime, the joke will be on "lapdogs" like you.

Dear Davil's Lapdog,

Does you ID represent your acute fascination and appreciation of lunacy, death and destruction?

You are entitle to your opinion and own world of twisted realities.
Ordinary Pakistanis are the helpless prisoners of the dark space created by galaxy of their civilian and military rulers.

If you are not aware of reasons and history of India-Pakistan conflict, please get your self acquainted first, before making comments.

If you do not want to believe what Indians say, read what the present Pakistani ambassador to USA, Haqqani has written and been quoted at FP also:

"Hostilities between Pakistan and India continues, in Pakistan it serves as an important element of national identification."

In this book titled, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Haqqani has analyzed Pakistan and its defining problems.

Pakistan of today, sadly represents the resultant of acutely bad leadership along with pursuance of self destructive national goals and objectives along with regressive religious obscurantism and love of violence as foreign policy tools.

"25-30 years from now, when India has a much larger and younger population than China, buttressed by a stronger civil society than China will ever form under its current regime"

AlexBC has always been against China, but I have no idea why he would be so pro-India. The fact is that 25-30 years ago China came out of the cultural revolution in a far worse conditions than India. Both of these nations grew significantly during this time which is good for all, but today you can easily argue that the average Chinese lives better than the average Indian. You see many Indian writers who display a weird superiority complex when it comes to Pakistan and inferiority complex when it comes to China and you have wonder why. Bashing Pakistan or China doesn't exactly improve India any nor will it stop China from growing.

Study from rights groups this year ranked India in the top 5 worst places to live for women, along with places like Afghanistan and rival Pakistan. It has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. It's more corrupt than even China. 1 out of 3 Indian women can't read, how the democracy can function properly under such conditions if baffling. Sure China has tons of issues but India has just as many if not more issues to deal with, with the flawed democracy system which often hinders rather than speed up the process.

What is true is that India will definitely surpass China in terms of population. Whether this is a good thing or bad thing depends on how well India can address its problems. If the past two decades is of any indication the only way for India to catch up to China is if China implodes from within. However if this happens the entire world will undergo a depression including India with China as its largest trading partner.

>>> You see many Indian writers who display a weird superiority complex when it comes to Pakistan and inferiority complex when it comes to China and you have wonder why.

There might be an inferiority complex at work, but more likely these authors are using the Tom Friedman trick of making China the stand-in for whatever policy they want to support. As in "if China can build an 8-lane superhighway through the middle of a city, why can't India". The answer of course is that Indian planners can't just bulldoze the slums.

In my opinion China and India are not natural enemies. Each one has always had its own backyard, South Asia for India and Southeast Asia for China. In the early days of Indian independence, under Nehru, it was all Hindi-Chini bhai bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers). After the Chinese invasions, things have gone into deep freeze.

And recent provocations by China haven't helped, like the Arunachal Pradesh visa issue. India has cordially reciprocated by modulating the activities of the Tibetan government in exile etc. The whole thing is silly but the good part is that both countries are so focused on economic growth that outright war is very unlikely.

My hope is some day soon there will be a Nixon-like moment and the whole relationship will flip. Maybe that will happen after China gets a more representative government.

Stories of Pakistan's eminent decline and destruction have been going on from decades. Yet, Pakistan has a stable middle class and some of the top schools in the world. However, the perception that Pakistan is falling apart completely takes place over reality.

India on the other hand has so many problems- not including external threats from Pakistan and China, but also problems with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. Also, internally, it faces opposition from Maoist rebels (who control the territory the size of Pakistan itself). I won't even get into its problems in Kashmir, Khalistan, Assam, Nagaland, etc. Yet, the media (especially in the West) chooses to show India as this happy land where stability rules and eveyone is Middle Class. I have lived in India, that is a bloody lie!

As for the origins of Indo-Pak tensions, I say they lie with fanatical and angry Hindu extremists who will always resent a Muslim presence in 'their' subcontinent. Especially one that does not serve under their domination as Pakistan does not. The Indian media and its Pakistan-obsessed fetish just shows the anti-Muslim hatred of most Hindus very succintly!

Not hard to feel superior to a country that gained independence 64 years ago and so far has bumped off five of its heads of state or government, and countless more second- and third-echelon leaders. A country that split in two when one major part of it marched out due to lousy administration from Islamabad, to form a new nation -- Bangladesh.

In this commentary about the missing $800 billion, no mention of the mutterings from senior Pakistani military figures that they didn't need that money anyway. I don't know whether that was based on the idea that they really didn't need it, or that they could replace it with a similar sum from Beijing. But it doesn't seem to have been the crushing blow Washington had in mind.

Dear Lapdog,
What Pakistani Army/ISI and its Rulers have been doing to India is well known and I am not going to repeat.

Perhaps unknown to you, Indian Muslims have achieved imminent positions in Politics, Bureaucracy, Education, Social work, Entertainment, Business, Industry and Trade.

I am not giving any names, please "Google" to educate yourself.

Apart from above the like any other citizen, Indian Muslims have also made name in field of crime, thuggery, money laundering and other dubious professions.

The biggest tax evader and money launders in India History is one Pune resident Hasan Ali, a rich horse breeder and a former scrap dealer.

However, it is well known that such news and views are of no use to you.

And please, give us a break and stop being fake spokesman of Indian Muslims, they have many old an modern leaders coming up. unlike Pakistani Muslim, who have unfortunately been afflicted with perennially bad leadership.

Well, if highly educated and opinionated Pakistanis like you think Chinese would better partners than Americans, it must be tried forthwith with out any delay.

Please do that, and we might discuss this issue in future, about your expectations and their instant fulfillment.

However, in Politics, there are no Permanent Friends and Enemies, but some people do have such hazy teenagers illusions, which might get ironed out in the EXPECTED adulthood.

The result would be totally difference, if some one never grows and remains a child.

You do realize that there is a certain irony in the in the title of your post "Dangerously Ignirant"?

Also, the author's point isn't that Pakistan shouldn't play the field, it's the China is a poor substitute when it comes to providing anything but weapons.

No doubt Pakistan has benefited and will continue to benefit with trade with China or any other nation.

In spite of their political posturing, Chinese and Indians are continue to increase their trade and rightly so. Decades back, Chinese had dumped their Marxist/Communist/Socialist-anti business ideals in to yellow sea, and how astute and even brutal traders and businessmen.

So the idea, that China will continue to side with sadly dysfunctional Pakistan at the cost of much more and wider trade with progressing India, is a fallacy and would not happen.

Chinese, in spite of past bonhomie and present platitude are increasingly worried about tentacles of Islamic fundamentalism reaching parts of Muslim population in China.

Anybody who has actually gone to Gadwar will tell you that it is a sad sad joke played on the Chinese by the Pakistanis. Gadwar is in the middle of a desert, surrounded by empty land as far as the eye can see. The only solitary road leading out of Gadwar passes through highly dangerous and highly mined road that the Baluchi tribes regularly attack. There is no police, there is no security and there is no civilization in and around Gadwar for miles. Even the Chinese have given up on making it a viable port for them to transport oil and gas over land to China.

The Baluchi tribes detest the port, the Chinese are uncertain yet the Pakistanis believe that this port is going to be their salvation because "other nations" are going to exploit it and take the risks while they just have to sit back and reap a windfall. This fantasy is what the Pakistani's have peddled to the Chinese and any who will hear but now even the Chinese have come to realize the cold hard truth.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/03/pakistan_s_black_pearl

Striver,

Please do not strive to extend biases, conjectures and blatant subterfuge.

Looking at Gwadar today is like looking at Hollywood in the 1920s for someone without vision- "what does one expect from orange orchards in California?"

In the future, it will serve three purposes: (i) an alternative sea port to Karachi (which is too close to India); (ii) a way of sending oil to China; and (iii) a naval/intelligence post for things in the Middle East . The Chinese are smart, they are not going to spend billions on roads and ports for nothing. As for the Baluchi tribesmen, when the oil flows you can easily buy them off.

I disagree with some of the commentators that Islam is the great threat to China. The greatest threat to China is from CHRISTIANITY- growing like a plague to over 100 million from almost zero decades ago. A growing foreign religion that is tilted to the West (America) can be a very dangerous internal threat to China if a war between the US and China ever breaks out!

Going beyond this article, the reactions like yours are part of age old cast iron narrative.

Looks like Pakistani Rulers, you too love to term hard truth as mere fiction.

Examples:

1. OBL was not hiding in Pakistan but in Afghanistan.

2. Now it is not still believed Mullah Omar, Jawahiri other terrorists are hiding in Pakistan.

3. Captured Pakistani Terrorist, Kasab was not a Pakistani.

4. ISI had no role in 26/11 Attack, in spite of multiple evidences and verifiable electronic footprints and other evidences from various sources.

5, Pakistan never attacked India and it was always other way around.

6. ISI and its agents had no role in hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC 184.

7. It was not believed that Bali bomber was also hiding in same Abbotabad, where OBL was found with numbers of wives and half a dozen kids.

8. ISI is still hiding about 50 Indian Terrorists and other criminals and using them to bleed India.

9. ISI is busy printing counterfeit Indian and Other currencies and must have learned the fine trade from Chinese who did it with perfection in past and believed to be still involved.

10. ISI has been behind smoke screen propaganda of Indian excesses in Kashmir by agents in USA and Europe.

I can go on, but wont serve any purpose and what ever i have reminded, might no affect any delusional jingoist working to a plan.

But surprises do happen too

You want to know what the Chinese really think of Pakistanis?

Here you go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0u474Gx4kc