Discovering Lesser Known Side of China

Chi­na is not only a neigh­bor but an all-weath­er friend of Pak­istan. There is often exchange of del­e­ga­tions between both coun­tries for var­i­ous pur­pos­es. Despite that, very lit­tle is known about Chi­na in Pak­istan. There are many places in Chi­na which have vir­tu­al­ly remained hid­den from pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion of Pak­istan. One such place is Weifang city in Shan­dong province of Chi­na.

From 1st to 5th July, I hap­pened to be part of Dis­cov­er Weifang trip along with a dozen oth­er jour­nal­ists from around the world. What I wit­nessed and expe­ri­enced in this trip made me real­ize how a com­mon Pak­istani is absolute­ly clue­less about most parts of chi­na except Bei­jing and Shang­hai.

Weifang is a pre­fec­ture lev­el city of Shan­dong province. Pop­u­la­tion of Weifang is over 9 mil­lion and it com­pris­es of 4 dis­tricts and 6 towns. Weifang is also the home­town of Mo Yan, the first Chi­nese to receive Nobel Prize in lit­er­a­ture.

Weifang is also known as the Kite Cap­i­tal of the world for its kite pro­duc­tion base. Mei­cun Kite pro­duc­tion vil­lage in Weifang pro­duces 80 mil­lion kites annu­al­ly that are export­ed most­ly to Europe and North Amer­i­ca. Apart from that Weifang is also known for its unique­ness in paint­ing, art, food and cul­ture.

It would be sur­pris­ing for most peo­ple that a cul­tur­al hub like Weifang also con­tains a state of the art high tech zone that spreads on an area of 110 square kilo­me­ter. Over 100 com­pa­nies oper­ate in this zone and their prod­ucts are in no way less supe­ri­or than the prod­ucts of com­pa­nies in Sil­i­con Val­ley and oth­er high tech zones in devel­oped coun­tries.

That’s not all, Weifang has more to offer. Zhucheng coun­ty of Weifang hosts world’s largest col­lec­tion of Dinosaur fos­sils. Zhucheng Dinosaur Geop­ark is an amaz­ing place to vis­it for any tourist who is baf­fled by the thought of exis­tence of dinosaurs at a point in time. In most of coun­tries, dis­cov­ered fos­sils of Dinosaurs are extract­ed from the site and then dis­played at a muse­um. In Weifang a muse­um has been built at the site where fos­sils were dis­cov­ered. This has min­i­mized the risk of los­ing and dam­ag­ing the fos­sils dur­ing trans­port­ing them from one place to anoth­er. The way Weifang gov­ern­ment has man­aged the Dinosaur Park is a les­son to be learnt for all the devel­op­ing coun­tries in pro­tect­ing their archae­o­log­i­cal her­itage.

I was impressed by a num­ber of things dur­ing my short trip and one of them was the effec­tive man­age­ment and gov­er­nance by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. For some­one who fol­lows gov­er­nance in Pak­istan close­ly, suc­cess­ful gov­er­nance in Chi­na was noth­ing short of huge sur­prise for me. All the afore­men­tioned sites in Weifang were dili­gent­ly man­aged by the gov­ern­ment. Invest­ment from the state had kept the cul­tur­al her­itage of Weifang alive and facil­i­tat­ed in mak­ing it self-sus­tain­able.

More­over, anoth­er thing which caught my atten­tion was the fact that cities in Chi­na were devel­oped with fool­proof plan­ning. High tech Zone of Weifang, for exam­ple, was devel­oped in 1992. It’s per­fect­ly designed and all the fac­tors are tak­en into account about the future needs of the area. As a result there are no munic­i­pal lev­el prob­lems that are com­mon in Pak­istan such as short­age of water, san­i­ta­tion prob­lems, and pol­lu­tion issues. Apart from that extra empha­sis is laid on keep­ing the cities clean. Not only gov­ern­ment has the nec­es­sary appa­ra­tus at dis­pos­al to col­lect and dump garbage but peo­ple are also edu­cat­ed about the need to keep their cities clean.

Traf­fic sys­tem in Weifang was flaw­less and there were no issue of traf­fic con­ges­tion like we face in Pak­istan on rou­tine basis. I noticed there were not many traf­fic police­men on the traf­fic sig­nals in Weifang. There were traf­fic sig­nals with CCTV cam­eras installed. Any offend­er of traf­fic rules is caught on CCTV cam­eras and penal­ized accord­ing­ly. This is just an exam­ple of how mod­ern civ­i­lized coun­tries man­age their traf­fic sys­tems.

Fur­ther­more, com­mon per­cep­tion about Chi­na is that it’s a total­i­tar­i­an dic­ta­tor­ship where only one par­ty rules the state. It’s believed that the com­mon peo­ple of Chi­na are sup­pressed and kept in dark­ness. I was shocked to wit­ness that this per­cep­tion is wild­ly untrue. Com­mon peo­ple of Chi­na seemed to be free from any sort of sup­pres­sion in their dai­ly lives. They all seemed to be hap­py and enjoy­ing their dai­ly lives and work. There is an over­whelm­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion of females in the work­force and there are no issues of gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion. In fact, a com­mon Chi­nese cit­i­zen in Weifang is liv­ing a much bet­ter life com­pared to peo­ple in India or Pak­istan.

There is no rea­son that Pak­istan can­not learn from the Chi­nese mod­el to achieve the same lev­el of suc­cess in due course of time. While receiv­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in invest­ment from Chi­na, Pak­istan gov­ern­ment should also seri­ous­ly con­sid­er bor­row­ing suc­cess­ful gov­er­nance prac­tices from its neigh­bor.