Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : When the British flooded China with opium in the nineteenth century, they did not merely poison a people; they paralyzed a civilization. China’s national will was broken, its economy dismantled, and its sovereignty sold to foreign powers. The Communist Revolution of 1949 ended that humiliation, abolishing monarchy and feudal privilege and rebuilding the state on socialist foundations. Yet even after political liberation, the struggle against material poverty continued.
By the start of the 1980s, China’s western frontier—especially Xinjiang—remained trapped in deprivation. The province’s per-capita GDP hovered around ¥400 (≈ US $60), barely one-tenth of the national coastal average. Literacy was below 65 percent, life expectancy only 57–58 years, and infant mortality exceeded 60 per thousand births. Unemployment and under-employment surpassed 20 percent, and fewer than 30 percent of households had access to electricity or clean drinking water. Roads were sparse, hospitals were few, and higher education enrollment stood below 7 percent of eligible youth.
In this bleak landscape, Deng Xiaoping’s declaration—“Development is the hard truth”—became a national turning point. His leadership and the political will of the Communist Party re-anchored policy around one principle: China could not rise if its western half remained behind.
The 1980s therefore marked a deliberate beginning. The state poured investment into education and human development. Thousands of rural schools were built, teacher-training colleges expanded, and adult literacy drives reached even remote villages. Within a decade, literacy climbed to 82 percent, and life expectancy rose to 63 years. Agriculture was revitalized under the household-responsibility system, lifting grain and cotton yields by more than 40 percent. Rural health clinics and cooperative medical schemes began to extend basic care.
The 1990s concentrated on physical connectivity. Xinjiang’s first expressway linked Urumqi to Korla, rail lines stretched toward Kashgar, and irrigation projects converted deserts into farmland. Electricity production tripled, clean-water access passed 60 percent, and telephone coverage reached nearly all prefectures. The region’s GDP surpassed ¥1,200 (≈ US $180) per person. More importantly, mobility and market access dismantled isolation.
The 2000s saw industrial take-off under the Western Development Strategy. Energy pipelines, fertilizer and textile plants, and logistics parks emerged across the province. Vocational institutes trained tens of thousands of rural youth for skilled work. Per-capita income reached ¥8,000 (≈ US $1,200) by 2010, and the poverty rate plunged from over 40 percent in 2000 to below 15 percent by the decade’s end. Stable housing, paved roads, and rural electrification transformed living conditions.
The 2010s globalized the province. With the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xinjiang became China’s western gateway. The Khorgos Dry Port on the Kazakh border evolved into one of the world’s busiest inland logistics hubs, handling more than six million tons of freight annually. Rail links to Europe shortened delivery times from 45 days to 12. Border trade centers, warehouses, and customs-free zones created tens of thousands of private jobs. Tourism and cultural industries flourished, turning local music, dance, and crafts into engines of pride and prosperity. By 2018, GDP per capita exceeded ¥35,000 (≈ US $5,000) and urbanization passed 60 percent.
The 2020s have anchored the shift from expansion to innovation. Xinjiang’s deserts now glitter with solar panels and wind turbines generating over 35 percent of regional electricity. Smart farming uses artificial intelligence, drones, and sensors to manage water in the Tarim Basin. IT parks in Urumqi and Changji host software and e-commerce firms; local universities partner with national institutes on artificial-intelligence and renewable-energy research. High-speed rail now links Urumqi to Lanzhou and Beijing, cutting travel to under 11 hours. Literacy exceeds 99 percent, life expectancy tops 75 years, and infant mortality has fallen below 6 per thousand. Per-capita income approaches ¥45,000 (≈ US $6,300), and unemployment has dropped below 5 percent—a forty-year reversal of fortune.
Behind this transformation stands unwavering political will. Each Five-Year Plan built upon the last, guided by a leadership that fused vision with accountability. The Cadre Performance Appraisal System required every village and county head to meet quantifiable targets—jobs created, infrastructure completed, educational gains achieved, and environmental standards maintained. Those who delivered rose; those who failed were replaced. This meritocracy of performance ensured continuity across generations.
During the author’s visits in 2012–2013 and again in 2024, the transformation was visible not only in concrete but in confidence. Modern highways sliced through once-barren landscapes. Border bazaars bustled with Central-Asian traders. IT students filled new university campuses. Families who once lived in mud-brick houses now owned cars, smartphones, and small businesses. The people’s dignity matched their development.
Comparing Xinjiang’s condition in 1980 with its remarkable transformation by 2025 reveals a story of unprecedented human progress. Literacy has surged from around 65 percent to over 99 percent, reflecting universal education and vocational training that empowered every generation. Life expectancy, once limited to about 58 years, now exceeds 75 years, thanks to modern healthcare, improved nutrition, and cleaner living conditions. Infant mortality, which stood at nearly 60 deaths per thousand births, has fallen to less than 6, marking one of the most dramatic improvements in public health anywhere in the developing world. Per-capita GDP has multiplied from a mere ¥400 to about ¥45,000, turning subsistence living into economic self-sufficiency. Unemployment has plummeted from roughly 20 percent to around 5 percent, while urbanization has nearly tripled—from 23 percent to 68 percent—bringing modern amenities and new opportunities to millions. Perhaps most symbolic of all, electricity access, which reached fewer than one-third of households in 1980, is now universal, illuminating every home and powering a new era of industrial, agricultural, and digital advancement.
Xinjiang’s story now transcends its borders. It offers a replicable model for nations still trapped in cycles of poverty and underdevelopment. The region demonstrates how to transform an unskilled population into a skilled, confident workforce through mass education and vocational training; how to turn formidable deserts into power-producing fields of solar and wind energy; how to bring greenery and agriculture to barren lands using modern irrigation and AI-driven precision farming; and how to elevate primitive bazaars into vibrant commercial centers and cross-border markets that drive regional trade. Xinjiang also illustrates the leap from subsistence agriculture to high-productivity agribusiness and from negligible industrial output to a thriving manufacturing base capable of meeting domestic demand and exporting abroad.
For developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the Xinjiang model provides a roadmap—a synthesis of political commitment, institutional accountability, human-capital development, and environmental innovation. With local adaptation, the same principles can raise any struggling region: empower people with education, equip them with skills, connect them through infrastructure, and sustain them with green technology.
From the forgotten deserts of 1980 to the dynamic economy of 2025, Xinjiang’s journey proves that prosperity is built, not bestowed—a triumph of will, work, and wisdom. Its transformation stands as living proof that visionary leadership, disciplined planning, and social investment can lift not just a province, but an entire civilization from poverty to pride.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : For decades, presidents of the United States have believed they could shape the world by interfering in other nations’ affairs—installing leaders of their choice, propping up allies who served their interests, and sidelining or imprisoning nationalist figures who threatened American designs. This pattern, repeated from Latin America to the Middle East, has been central to Washington’s projection of power. But under President Donald Trump, the limits of that model are becoming clear. Despite America’s military reach and financial muscle, there now stand two forces beyond Trump’s control: China, which has matured into an economic giant strong enough to resist U.S. leverage, and the American people themselves, who are openly challenging what they see as his king-like behavior. To this must be added a third failure closer to home—his inability to bring Congress into agreement, leaving the federal government paralyzed in a costly shutdown. Together, these three fronts expose the fragility of Trump’s leadership and the strain on America’s global standing.
For decades, Washington relied on leverage to bend others to its will. Yet China, over years of patient strategy, has taken its fate into its own hands. It has grown economically, financially, and industrially so strong that America can no longer dictate terms. Any attempt to coerce Beijing now risks countermeasures with devastating consequences for U.S. industry and commerce. The clearest example lies in rare earth minerals and magnets, critical to modern technology, where China holds near total dominance. Nearly 70% of global rare earth mining and over 85% of refining is controlled by Beijing, a chokehold over the materials that power smartphones, electric cars, wind turbines, and advanced weapons systems. When Beijing tightened its grip on exports, the United States was brought to its knees. Without these inputs, the American defense and tech industries risk collapse. Trump’s response has been to consider imposing another one-hundred percent tariff on Chinese goods—on top of the $361 billion in Chinese imports already tariffed since 2018—but Beijing has already diversified away from dependency on the American market. What once was a weapon of leverage for Washington is now a hollow threat.
China’s leverage extends far beyond minerals. It holds over $775 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, the largest foreign holder after Japan, and can disrupt the global currency balance by offloading them. It has built infrastructure and currency swap agreements across the Belt and Road Initiative, encompassing more than 150 countries and covering two-thirds of the world’s population, allowing trade in national currencies that bypass the dollar altogether. It possesses the capacity to redirect exports to other markets: in 2024, ASEAN overtook the U.S. as China’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade worth more than $950 billion, compared to just $575 billion with the United States. By contrast, U.S. options look weak. Threatening to halt sales of civilian aircraft parts may wound Boeing more than Beijing, since over 25% of Boeing’s orders in the last decade came from China, worth nearly $150 billion. Proclaiming America as the ultimate consumer market rings hollow when China has been cultivating alternative demand across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Trump’s bluster of tariffs and ultimatums may play well to his base, but it cannot mask the reality that the United States has lost the upper hand. Only negotiation, not confrontation, offers a way forward, but the White House seems unwilling to admit it.
If China represents Trump’s international failure, the American people have emerged as his domestic challenge. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, or Syria, where U.S. power crushed resistance, Trump now faces opposition at home that cannot be bombed into silence or destabilized through covert tricks. Across states and cities, nearly two million Americans have taken to the streets, protesting what they describe as Trump’s king-like conduct. They oppose his deployment of federal immigration forces and even National Guard units into states under circumstances that many legal scholars argue violate the Constitution. The Guard is meant to be mobilized for extraordinary threats, typically from foreign enemies, not to police civilians in peacetime. To many, Trump’s orders resemble the occupation of foreign lands rather than the governance of a democracy. Protesters chant that they do not want a king; they want liberty, dignity, and democracy respected. So far, their defiance has been largely peaceful, but if Trump continues his path of executive overreach, anger could boil over into violence, with consequences that would plunge the nation into crisis.
Trump has dismissed these accusations with irritation, insisting he is no monarch but a servant working day and night to restore America’s dignity and power. Yet perception matters, and his tone has only fueled resistance. Unlike pliant foreign regimes, the American people are vocal, organized, and fully aware of their rights. They are not easily subdued. If Trump cannot win their trust, his authority will be weakened from within, regardless of what strength he projects abroad. For a president who promised to put America first, alienating America itself is a damning irony. Perhaps he should take inspiration from his so-called “favorite” Field Marshal Asim Munir of Pakistan—a man who has managed to bend under his thumb not only the National Assembly, Senate, Judiciary, and Government, but also an entire population of 250 million. If Trump truly yearns to rule unchecked, maybe a mentoring session with Munir could teach him the dark arts of silencing institutions and crushing dissent. It would be a masterclass in authoritarian success, but one that destroys democracy in the process.
On a third front, Trump has stumbled in the political heart of Washington: the relationship with Congress. It is now the twenty-second day of a government shutdown, with no bipartisan agreement in sight to reopen the federal apparatus. The impasse revolves around social spending, especially healthcare and Social Security benefits for seniors, retirees, and the disabled. Democrats insist these programs be preserved at their previous levels; Trump threatens to cut them unless his budget priorities are met. In retaliation, he has warned that Democratic initiatives and projects will be frozen entirely if they refuse to yield. This standoff has left more than 800,000 federal workers unpaid, public services crippled, and international confidence in U.S. governance shaken. The economic cost has been staggering: independent estimates suggest the shutdown has already drained nearly $3 billion per week from the U.S. economy, with projections of as much as $24 billion in losses if it lasts two months, shaving 0.2% off quarterly GDP growth. Small businesses relying on federal contracts are collapsing, loan approvals are frozen, and families living paycheck to paycheck are being forced into debt. The possibility that the shutdown could extend for months looms over the nation like a shadow, underlining not only a breakdown of negotiation but a collapse of leadership. The president, ultimately responsible for ensuring the functioning of government, has instead become the architect of its paralysis.
The damage reverberates abroad. Allies and rivals alike are watching, noting that America cannot manage its own house, let alone dictate terms to others. Each passing day without resolution chips away at U.S. credibility. For Trump, the stakes are immense. His ability to govern effectively is being judged not only by his opponents but by history itself. To fail simultaneously in managing China, his own people, and his own legislature would mark not just a troubled presidency but a broken model of leadership. Yet so far, he has responded with threats and defiance rather than compromise and wisdom.
The way forward is clear, though whether Trump will take it is uncertain. He must abandon the illusion of unilateral control and return to democratic norms. He must negotiate in good faith with Congress to restore government operations, even if it means conceding ground. He must respect the constitutional limits on deploying federal forces in states, reassuring the public that their freedoms are safe. And he must recognize that with China, confrontation is a dead end; dialogue is the only path that preserves America’s interests without triggering global economic disruption. Every war, whether military, trade, or political, ends at the negotiating table. Sooner is always better than later, for the longer conflict drags on, the greater the damage to all sides.
Trump has prided himself on being a deal-maker, but at this crossroads he has become a breaker of deals, a divider of people, and a trigger of crises. His legacy will not be judged by the force of his threats but by his capacity to resolve conflicts constructively. If he fails to change course, his presidency may be remembered not for making America great again, but for revealing just how fragile its greatness had become.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : When a member of Congress asked who now holds the advantage between the United States and China, Kurt M. Campbell did not search for diplomatic shelter. He answered plainly—“China, China, China”—and added that America is in a more fragile position. That exchange distilled a wider realization in Washington: the contest is no longer about who has the cleverest idea, but about who can pair ideas with scale, speed, finance, and supply chains that actually deliver.
Across robotics, autonomous systems, shipbuilding, critical minerals, and the green-energy stack, China has assembled an industrial machine that converts plans into production with few seams. The United States still leads in many forms of research and in the highest tiers of AI hardware and software. Yet too often these strengths sit on islands that are hard to connect to the physical economy. China, by contrast, works from the factory outward. It absorbs a technology, replicates it at home, pushes costs down, and then ships it to the world. That pattern—learn, scale, export—now runs through much of its economy.
This is evident on factory floors. China has built the world’s largest base of industrial robots and the domestic suppliers to keep adding more of them, allowing factories to iterate quickly and standardize quality. It shows up in the air as well, where Chinese drones dominate civilian markets and where military variants have spread to buyers that find Western systems unaffordable or unavailable. Autonomy at scale is not just a technical feat; it is a logistics and training advantage that compounds year after year.
The imbalance is even clearer at sea. Chinese yards deliver commercial ships at a rate that American yards cannot currently approach. Those deliveries are not only commercial statistics. They translate into maritime resilience, sealift, and the capacity to replace hulls fast if a crisis damages them. Industrial power is not an abstraction; it is a queue of vessels sliding down the ways, month after month. America’s shipbuilding base, meanwhile, is thin, specialized, and expensive to expand, which leaves the country reliant on time it may not have.
Beneath these visible platforms lies a quieter source of leverage: rare earths and allied magnet materials. Modern electronics, precision weapons, wind turbines, and electric drivetrains all depend on them. China does not merely mine a large share of these inputs; it processes and refines them, and it manufactures the magnets that sit at the end of the chain. When Beijing tightened export restrictions, markets felt the tremor immediately. U.S. officials have pressed China to ease those curbs and have worked to rally partners to reduce concentration risk. That effort is prudent, but it also acknowledges the present reality—critical stages of the chain are outside American control.
It is here that the familiar American toolkit—tariffs, export controls, and the weaponization of data and finance—meets its limit. Measures of this kind can unsettle smaller or more fragile economies; they have done so repeatedly in the past. They are far less effective against a state with a continental-scale market, deep foreign-exchange reserves, a disciplined industrial policy, and broad capacity to substitute or reroute flows when pressured. China has spent years preparing for that pressure by localizing essential inputs, building parallel financial pipes, and hardening its digital and data regimes. A country that can supply so much of its own demand and anchor so many others’ supply is not easily forced to change course from the outside.
That is why the question posed in the hearing—will punitive tariffs work this time—lands differently today. Tariffs can raise Chinese costs at the American border, but they also raise costs for American producers who rely on Chinese inputs at every intermediate step. If the response from Beijing is to ratchet controls on minerals, chemicals, or magnet materials, the downstream impact is immediate: delays, higher bills, and quality slippage as firms scramble for substitutes. The economic effect accumulates in quieter ways as well. Investment decisions are deferred; projects are redesigned; factories operate below capacity. The result is slower growth and a steady erosion of credibility in the claim that America can out-produce its rival where it matters most.
Washington sees this bind and is examining ways to mine, process, and manufacture more of these inputs at home. That path is necessary, but it is not quick. Permitting, capex, skilled labor, environmental safeguards, local consent, and shared infrastructure mean any serious build-out takes well over a decade to mature. Even then, the unit costs will be markedly higher than those produced by an ecosystem in China that has already reached enormous scale. The arithmetic is straightforward: if domestic inputs are several times more expensive than imported ones, consumers pay more, manufacturers lose margin, or both. And if China chooses to restrict intermediate goods while America is still scaling its replacements, the squeeze is immediate. It is the classic choice between the devil and the deep sea.
None of this argues for resignation. It argues for realism. Treating China as an equal party in the global economy does not mean conceding strategic ground; it means recognizing that coercive instruments will not deliver quick or clean wins. A better first step is to lower the temperature of the tariff war by restoring duties toward earlier baselines and by limiting new restrictions to genuinely narrow security cases with clear, auditable justifications. That would not end competition. It would simply replace a spiral of retaliation with rules that both sides can plan around, which is the precondition for any serious industrial strategy at home.
De-escalation abroad must be matched by seriousness at home. The United States needs a long-horizon, bipartisan program that outlasts election cycles and that treats production as a national capability, not a slogan. That means modernizing ports and shipyards so output can compound rather than stall; accelerating permitting without waiving environmental standards; building regional hubs for magnets, specialty chemicals, and advanced components with public-private risk sharing; aligning procurement with delivery so firms are paid to produce, not to promise; and investing in workforce pipelines that can staff mines, mills, fabs, and yards. Recycling and re-use should be embedded from the start so domestic supply is not only larger but also more resilient when prices swing.
The same principle should guide the data front. The United States can and should protect sensitive datasets and core algorithms, but it should avoid broad regimes that punish neutral commercial activity or force partners to choose camps. A narrower, predictably enforced set of rules will better protect security without undermining competitiveness. Data is valuable because it flows; policy that freezes it indiscriminately tends to reduce American firms’ reach more than it constrains China’s.
Some will hear this and worry that stepping back from the tariff cliff signals weakness. The opposite is true. It signals confidence that America’s real advantage lies in the combination of research excellence, entrepreneurial depth, and an open capital market that can scale new industries when the ground rules are stable. Tariffs and blunt data controls may temporarily bruise a competitor, but they rarely build capacity at home. Capacity is built by patient investment, steady rules, and a clear list of priorities that does not change with each headline.
Campbell’s answer in the hearing was a snapshot of the present, not a verdict on the future. China’s strength today rests on a disciplined link between strategy and production. America’s path back runs through the same link. It will not be achieved by trying to bludgeon a rival that has already insulated itself from the tools that once worked on others. It will be achieved by lowering the noise, rebuilding the sinews of industry, and competing on the only terrain that decides enduring power: the ability to design, build, and deliver at scale. If the United States chooses that course, it will find that fragility is not fate. It is a diagnosis—and like any diagnosis, it is most useful when it prompts the right treatment.