A Joint Seminar of NDU - National Defence University

SESSION FOUR
KEY ISSUES IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: ENHANCING BILATERAL
COOPERATION
Introduction
Dr. Ishrat Hussain, former Governor State Bank of Pakistan chaired the fourth
session of the seminar which was dedicated to "Key issues in economic development:
Enhancing bilateral cooperation". From Pakistan Dr. Ashfaque Hasan Khan and from
China Mr. Mu Zhanlao were the presenters in the session. The presentations and
interactive discussion flagged the potential for Pakistan’s China consistent economic
partnership with the broad Asian advancement. It also debated the contours of regional
economic interdependence and the potential for taking comprehensive steps towards
promoting cooperation by way of bilateral and regional programs. With the remarks of
the chair this fertile session was wrapped up.
Speaker 1: Dr. Ashfaque Hassan Khan
In the start of his presentation, Dr. Ishfaq Hassan Khan exposited that China’s
development is worth emulating by other developing countries in many ways, specially
her historic transformation from a rural-agrarian, command economy to an urbanindustrial,
market-based economy with an average growth rate hovering around 10%
per annum and over 500 million people lifted out of poverty in just three decades.
Today, China is the world’s largest exporter and steel and energy consumer, with
its Forex reserves crossing $3trillion and per capita income pitched to reach $18000
mark (PPP basis) by 2030.Therefore, time is ripe to reformulate the global ‘rules of the
game’ in order to acknowledge China’s status as the rising global power and give it
more share in the decision-making on global level in the 21 st century.
However, China will not be able to maintain the pace of its economic growth
unless its neighbors benefit from its rise too. A step in this direction would be to create a
regional financial institution on the likes of IMF, such as Asian Monetary Fund (AMF),
which could act as the lender of the first resort to the regional economies to bail them
out of any future economic crises. Similarly, the basket of global reserve currencies
needs to be expanded from dollar, pound, euro and yen to include other regional
currencies like Chinese Yuan etc. With over $5 trillion reserves, this region needs
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