Cheating Today, Corruption Tomorrow

  In an international system undergoing rapid transformation, the emergence of a trilateral defense cooperation framework among Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia signals a notable shift in how middle powers are approaching security and strategic autonomy.Three states, each central to its respective region, are seeking to institutionalize collaboration in defense, industry, and crisis management. The significance of this alignment extends beyond bilateral ties and touches upon regional stability, defense industrialization, and the evolving balance of power in Eurasia and the Indian Ocean. The rationale for this cooperation lies in the complementary strengths that each country brings. Pakistan contributes a large, professionally trained military with extensive experience in counterterrorism, peacekeeping, and mountainous warfare. It also maintains a credible nuclear deterrent and has developed a domestic defense industry in areas such as aerospace, missiles, and armored vehicles. Its location provides access to the Arabian Sea and proximity to key trade and energy routes linking South Asia, Central Asia, and the Gulf. Türkiye offers a military with NATO operational experience, combined with one of the fastest-growing defense industrial bases outside the traditional Western suppliers. Over the last decade, Ankara has demonstrated capacity in unmanned aerial systems, naval platforms, electronics, and aerospace subsystems. Its geographic position, connecting Europe, the Mediterranean, and West Asia, makes it a natural bridge between different security theaters. Saudi Arabia adds financial depth, energy influence, and a central role in Gulf security. Under Vision 2030, Riyadh has prioritized localization of defense manufacturing and diversification of partnerships. The Kingdom also carries substantial weight in the Arab and Islamic world, giving any trilateral initiative immediate political resonance across a wide geography. When viewed together, these capabilities form the basis for a partnership that is both symbolic and practical. Symbolically, it represents a commitment by three major Muslim-majority states to take greater responsibility for regional security. Practically, it creates opportunities for joint development, procurement, training, and operational coordination that can reduce duplication and increase efficiency. The regional importance of this alignment can be understood in several contexts. The Middle East and South Asia continue to face a complex mix of traditional and non-traditional security challenges. These include maritime threats in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea, the proliferation of unmanned systems, cyber intrusions, and the persistent risk of transnational militancy. A structured mechanism for consultation among Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia provides an additional channel for de-escalation and coordinated response. In maritime terms alone, the cooperation could contribute to the security of sea lanes that carry a significant portion of global energy and trade. Equally important is the dimension of defense industry collaboration. All three states have expressed a desire to move away from over-reliance on external suppliers and to build indigenous capacity. A trilateral format allows for economies of scale in research and development, co-production, and technology transfer. Areas of immediate potential include air defense systems, drones and counter-drone technology, armored vehicles, naval ships, and cybersecurity infrastructure. Beyond the military domain, such industrial cooperation often generates spillovers into civilian sectors such as aviation, shipbuilding, and advanced manufacturing, thereby supporting broader economic diversification goals. There is also a clear utility in the area of human security. The armed forces of Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia have all been involved in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, both domestically and abroad. Institutionalizing cooperation in logistics, medical support, and rapid deployment can enhance the region’s ability to respond to natural disasters, which have become more frequent and severe due to climate change. At the global level, the impact of this pact should be assessed within the framework of a multipolar world. The era of reliance on a single security provider is receding. States are increasingly building flexible, interest-based coalitions. The Pakistan-Türkiye-Saudi Arabia arrangement fits this pattern. It is not designed to replace existing alliances, but to complement them. All three countries maintain important relationships with the United States, China, the European Union, and Russia. The trilateral framework offers them greater flexibility and reduces exposure to disruptions in supply chains or shifts in political conditionality. For the wider Muslim world, this initiative presents a model of cooperation based on functional objectives rather than ideological or sectarian lines. It demonstrates that collective action is possible on issues of security, technology, and economic resilience. If successful, it could encourage similar arrangements in Africa and Southeast Asia, contributing to a more decentralized and networked global security architecture. From an economic perspective, defense cooperation often acts as a catalyst for deeper trade and investment. Joint ventures in defense production can lead to partnerships in technology, education, and infrastructure. Secure and stable regions are also essential for the trade corridors that all three states are seeking to develop, whether linking the Gulf to South Asia or connecting Anatolia to Central Asia. The long-term effectiveness of this pact will depend on how it is institutionalized. Three considerations will be decisive. First, the framework must remain open and consultative, so that it is not perceived as an exclusive bloc. Second, communication must be clear that the purpose is defensive and stabilizing, to avoid unnecessary misperceptions. Third, the cooperation must be rooted in sustainable industrial planning and regular exercises, rather than remaining at the level of declarations. The timing of this alignment is significant. The world in 2026 is marked by geopolitical competition, technological disruption, and climate-related stresses. In such an environment, states that can pool resources and coordinate policy are better positioned to protect their interests and contribute to regional stability. In essence, the trilateral defense cooperation among Pakistan, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia reflects a pragmatic recognition that security in the 21st century is interconnected. No single state can address maritime security, technological change, or humanitarian crises alone. By aligning their capabilities, these three countries are creating a platform that can deliver tangible benefits in deterrence, industrial development, and crisis response. This is not merely a defense agreement. It is an expression of strategic convergence among states that share geography, history, and a stake in a stable international order. If implemented with consistency

A familiar and recurring phantom is once again haunting the political and intellectual horizon of Pakistan: the clamor for administrative redistribution and the carving out of new provinces. Whenever structural collapse, economic decay, and institutional governance reach their absolute nadir, the sanctums of power and the opaque enclaves of the establishment begin to chant a singular, predictable refrain. The root of all systemic malady, we are told, lies in the sheer geographical expanse of our existing provinces, and the ultimate panacea is the relentless division of the state. When one scrutinizes the subterranean motives, logical contradictions, and political expediencies governing this discourse, an uncomfortable truth starkly emerges. This persistent endeavor to shift the blame for chronic misgovernance and policy failure onto geographical boundaries, cultural entities, and ethnic identities is merely a resurrection of a time-worn colonial playbook—a deliberate diversion designed to distract the citizenry from real structural grievances while consolidating the apparatus of absolute control. History bears poignant witness to the reality that whenever ruling elites fail to mask their administrative ineptitude, systemic incompetence, and constitutional deviations, they seek refuge behind the seductive mirage of better governance, transforming the republic into an endless laboratory of reckless experimentation. One is compelled to ask: does any sound mind truly accept the medical wisdom of amputating a limb simply because a malignant ulcer has taken root in the arm? Are the pathologies of governance so superficial that merely redrawing cartographic lines will spontaneously engender distributive justice, institutional merit, the rule of law, and administrative transparency? A careful, unvarnished reading of pre-partition South Asian history reveals that this formula of administrative fragmentation was never a native or democratic innovation. Rather, it was a tested and ruthless instrument of British imperialism, rooted entirely in the cynical philosophy of “Divide and Rule.” In October 1905, when Lord Curzon partitioned the sprawling province of Bengal under the alluring and deceptive banner of administrative efficiency, improved governance, and better public service delivery, the official justification was identical to today’s rhetoric: that managing such a vast demographic mass from a single center was untenable. Yet history dealt a merciless blow to that colonial experiment. The people of Bengal rightly perceived the partition as a direct, existential assault on their linguistic, cultural, and political integrity, rising in fierce and unyielding resistance. Ultimately, the imperial master was forced into an ignominious retreat, revoking the partition of Bengal in 1911. That historical episode remains an enduring monument and a stark warning to contemporary rulers who imagine they can trifle with the collective historical memory, cultural affinity, and geographical unity of a populace under the intoxicating influence of unchecked power. From the very inception of Pakistan, the ruling classes consistently spurned the genuine principles of cooperative federalism, choosing instead to enshrine coercive and authoritarian centralism as the ultimate guarantee of their survival. During the formative decades of the republic, when the delicate question of distributing democratic rights among diverse constituent units arose, the dominant factions lacked the political maturity required for a pluralistic state. Instead, they forced all the western provinces and states into an unnatural straitjacket known as the “One Unit” scheme. That dark chapter of authoritarian engineering laid bare the callous indifference of the ruling elite toward the historical identities and rich diversity of the people, subjugating all societal bonds to the preservation of concentrated power. When that forced administrative edifice eventually fractured under the weight of unrelenting public resistance, the four-province federal structure was reluctantly conceded. Yet the true spirit of federalism was never allowed to breathe. The constitutional imperatives of provincial autonomy were systematically subverted, resources were inequitably distributed, and the unquenchable thirst for hegemony converted the federation into a fragile, crisis-ridden entity perpetually at war with its own constituent parts. Renowned scholars and theorists of public administration and cooperative federalism universally agree that when any sub-national unit exceeds optimal parameters in territory and population, it inevitably succumbs to bureaucratic inertia and administrative paralysis. According to global academic consensus, effective public service delivery demands a balanced proportional equilibrium between geography and demography, ensuring that the writ of the state and essential services penetrate even the most peripheral districts. However, the high-performing federal democracies of the world—such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Germany—do not achieve excellence in governance merely because their constituent units happen to be geographically compact. They succeed because they rigorously enforce the foundational principle of **Subsidiarity**, which dictates that governance decisions must always be executed at the lowest possible tier capable of addressing them, rather than being arrogated by a distant center or provincial capital. Conversely, the powerful elite who orchestrate policy from behind the veil in Pakistan remain profoundly detached from this philosophical prerequisite. The core issue here is not the mere physical size of a province; it is the centralization of coercive power, deep-seated fiscal distortions, and a bankrupt political intent. In a country like Pakistan, where provinces already depend abjectly on federal transfers through the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, attempting to carve out new provinces without addressing the fundamentals of fiscal federalism will only exponentially multiply the economic burden. If one merely replicates provincial capitals, bloated cabinets, and superfluous administrative secretariats without dismantling the underlying corruption, nepotism, and systemic incompetence, the public will find no relief from their miseries. Instead, the state will be pushed deeper into fiscal insolvency and bureaucratic suffocation. This brings us to the most fundamental and inescapable question: if four provinces were to be multiplied into eight, sixteen, or thirty-six administrative units tomorrow, would traditional political parties magically vanish? Would the actors occupying the corridors of power in these new provinces descend from another planet, or would they simply be the identical political dynasties and entrenched interest groups of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Pakistan Muslim League, or Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf donning new nameplates? When the foundational structural architecture, the prevailing political culture, and the patronage networks of the elite remain utterly unaltered, how can the mere shifting of administrative borders dissolve the cancer of corruption, the

   For as long as the world can recall, the United States have controllably preserved their seat as the strongest one in the council of global superpowers- defeating the Nazis, USSR and setting their currency as the medium of trade and exchange. However, in recent events this strong hold seems to have become weakened as on the other side of the world a new power emerges, a power that the United States considers the biggest threat to their existence- the new super power China.   Ironically, China was still developing and submerged in poverty a few decades ago holding up its communist views and rejecting the new capitalist western world. Though they were not completely cut off on giving this new ideology a try, opening their first economic zone in Shenzhen in 1980 to pursue foreign investments and market based economic trade. Soon enough they realized the potential it had and once they started, they were quite impossible to stop.   It was in the 2010s that China had found numerous ways to include itself in the exporting and manufacturing industry. Every household was filled with items labeled “made in China”, however they were referred to as a low quality item hence cheaper. China nevertheless learnt, and they were fast learners. They knew that in a world dominated and feared by the United States they would have to have a friendlier approach. They started helping countries including Pakistan and many African nations with infrastructure projects in exchange for leverage and usage of their resources.   On the outside it seemed like a friendly deal, a helpful one even, but China knew that this was their way into achieving ultimate domination. The US was watching this very closely knowing very well what kind of abomination was taking place in front of their eyes, yet they could only spread propaganda about it, calling it “Debt trap Diplomacy” and “Predatory Lending”. The world did not give much thought since theyfinally had someone helping them without any threats and sanctions which they had experienced harshly in the past with the United States .   Uptil now, the USA still had the upper hand on oil and currency domination which was soon to get shaken up as well. Bill Clinton had put a ban on trading Iranian oil in his regime and so was done to Russia after they invaded Ukraine, meaning almost the whole world trading in US dollars could not buy Russian and Iranian oil.  Few of the other powerful currencies that could trade without the US dollar are euro, Japanese yen and Chinese yuan. Thus only China had the willingness to buy the sanctioned oil in their currency under different company names, trade routes which the US would find it difficult to identify and stop.   The United States has had  a history of having these geographical threats against major countries in order to secure their position. The same goes with China, with them using the strait of Malacca in southeast Asia as a passage they could close which would disrupt 80% of China’s oil trade. Chinese leaders have called this the “Malacca Dilemma” in the past.   Since the Iran war, it has come to light that China has once again found a path out of this misery and showed the world silently that this dilemma is far gone. When the whole world was panicking due to the Strait of Harmoz shutting down, China with no hurdles dropped their oil imports by 50% and started using their oil reserves which were more than double than usa. This was a direct showcase to the USA that even if they block straight out of Malacca- China will survive and wont go into an economic shutdown.   Now it is very evident that China has secured its position as an export leader, having significant oil reserves, defenses as well as the support of major countries through mutual diplomacy, and the US is forced down on its knees- especially after the Trump and Biden administration. The US has no options but to comply with China which was seen when Trump and his billionaire delegation visited China- which they were deemed to be intimidated by.

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest”— Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, The Russell–Einstein Manifesto, 1955   On the morning of August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a living city. Children were preparing for school, workers were beginning another day, meals were being eaten, conversations remained unfinished and countless ordinary plans had been made for an evening many would never see. At 8:15 am, a single atomic bomb changed all that. In seconds, a city became an inferno and human ingenuity demonstrated what it was capable of when divorced from human conscience. Three days later, Nagasaki suffered the same fate.   More than eight decades have passed, yet the mind still struggles to comprehend what happened. Not merely the scale of destruction, but the extraordinary contradiction it represented. Human beings had acquired sufficient knowledge of physics to split the atom but apparently insufficient wisdom to prevent that knowledge from being used to incinerate fellow human beings. This raises an uncomfortable question: is man the cruellest animal?   Animals kill. Nature is certainly not a sentimental place. Predators hunt for food, animals fight over territory, mates and dominance, and some species occasionally kill for reasons other than immediate survival. Yet no creature other than Homo sapiens has transformed killing into an organised industry. No animal constructs factories to manufacture weapons capable of destroying entire cities. None develops elaborate ideologies to justify mass slaughter, calculates acceptable casualties or decorates members of its species for becoming exceptionally efficient at killing others. Only the supposedly “wise man” has achieved such sophistication.   The atomic bombings cannot, of course, be examined outside the horrors of the Second World War. Nazi Germany had perpetrated the holocaust. Imperial Japan had committed horrific atrocities across Asia. Cities had already been devastated by conventional and incendiary bombing. Millions of soldiers and civilians were dead. Defenders of the decision to use atomic weapons maintain that the bombs accelerated Japan’s surrender and avoided an invasion that could have caused enormous casualties on both sides. Critics have long questioned whether alternatives existed and whether the second bombing, in particular, was necessary.   Historians may continue debating these questions. Humanity must confront another. At what point does military necessity cease to provide moral shelter for the deliberate infliction of unimaginable suffering upon civilians? Perhaps the most disturbing legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not simply that atomic bombs were used. It is that humanity had reached a stage where the destruction of enormous number of ordinary people could be incorporated into strategic calculation. Human beings had become numbers. Therein lies the first requirement of organised cruelty: dehumanisation.   Before we can inflict unbearable suffering upon others, we must somehow stop seeing them as ourselves. They become the enemy, an alien race, religion, nationality, sect or ideology. Children become unfortunate collateral damage. Dead bodies become casualty figures. Destroyed neighbourhoods become strategic targets. Language performs the anaesthesia that conscience might otherwise refuse. Once human beings are converted into categories, almost anything becomes possible.   History is littered with evidence. Colonial atrocities required subject populations to be regarded as inferior. Ethnic cleansing requires neighbours to become enemies. Genocide requires individual faces to disappear behind collective labels. Modern warfare similarly becomes easier to tolerate when suffering is viewed through satellite images rather than through the eyes of a mother holding her dead child. Perhaps that explains one of the strangest contradictions of our species. The same human hand that tenderly caresses a newborn can press the button that launches a missile towards somebody else’s newborn.   The same species that produces Mozart and Rumi, builds hospitals, writes poetry, explores distant planets and risks lives rescuing strangers from disasters also constructs concentration camps, torture chambers, chemical weapons and nuclear warheads. How can such tenderness and such barbarity inhabit the same creature?   We proudly call ourselves civilised. Yet civilisation cannot merely mean technological advancement. If anything, technology without corresponding moral advancement makes human beings more dangerous, not less. A primitive weapon can kill one person. Human intelligence created weapons capable of killing millions. Science gives us power. It does not necessarily give us wisdom. That distinction should haunt us.   The scientists who unlocked the secrets of the atom demonstrated one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements. But when knowledge becomes separated from ethics, achievement can become catastrophe. Ten years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, together with other distinguished scientists, issued their famous manifesto warning humanity about nuclear war. Their appeal was breathtakingly simple: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”   What an extraordinary plea to have to make to human beings. Remember that the person across the border is human. Remember that the child beneath the rubble is human. Remember that the mother screaming outside a hospital is human. Remember that beneath uniforms, flags, religions, ethnicities and nationalities beats essentially the same vulnerable human heart.   Yet eighty-one years after Hiroshima, humanity still maintains nuclear arsenals capable of inflicting destruction on a scale those who witnessed 1945 could scarcely have imagined. Governments speak comfortably of deterrence, strategic balance, tactical nuclear weapons and acceptable responses. Behind this sophisticated vocabulary lies an elementary reality: we have created instruments capable of annihilating ourselves and entrusted their possible use to human beings subject to anger, ambition, miscalculation and fear. What could be more absurd?   Perhaps the problem lies in our understanding of civilisation itself. We measure progress through economic growth, scientific discovery, technological innovation and military capability. We celebrate artificial intelligence, space exploration and machines capable of performing tasks once thought impossible but are we becoming better human beings? Can technological advancement truly be called progress if our moral consciousness remains primitive?   The jungle may be brutal, but it possesses no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no Bosnia, no Rwanda and no Gaza. Animals do not convene conferences to plan genocide. They do not manufacture propaganda to persuade millions to hate strangers. They do not teach generations to inherit ancient hostilities. Above all, they have never developed

(When the water rises, who shows up and who is left waiting?) ‎I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. When the water rises in Muskingum County or the Punjab plains, who shows up, and who is left waiting? I live in Sabzazar, a neighborhood in Lahore, Pakistan, but part of my heart is always sitting along the banks of the Moxahala Creek back home in Southeast Ohio. ‎ ‎My mother and brother still live right near South Zanesville, just a stone’s throw from Crooksville. When heavy rains hit Perry and Muskingum counties, I don’t need to be there to know what it looks like. I can picture the heavy, chocolate-brown water backing up into the low spots, the damp chill that settles into a basement, the fears of what if the waters reach a house trailer, and that specific, exhausting smell of river mud that takes weeks to scrub out of porch boards and carpet. The worries of if the home has structural damage.. Halfway across the world in Pakistan, the landscape couldn’t look more different. But when monsoon season swells the rivers across the Punjab, the view from the ground is hauntingly identical. ‎ ‎Standing in a flooded doorway feels the same whether you are in Ohio or Lahore. The quiet shock is the same. The ruin of things you worked years to buy is the same. And the very first instinct is to grab your coat, shovel, a chainsaw and a pair of boots and go check on the elderly woman next door.. Start hauling wet furniture, debris to the curb and giving comfort, food and basics to those in need is entirely universal. Watching both worlds at once makes you look at governance differently. It strips away abstract political jargon and leaves you asking one fundamental question: When a community is hit with a crisis, does its system build capable people who can act, or does it leave them sitting on their hands, waiting for permission to survive? ‎ ‎What a Small Ohio Village Taught Me About Governance ‎ ‎Growing up around South Zanesville and Crooksville, you learn pretty early that small-town life relies on a very specific kind of quiet, distributed agency. ‎Crooksville isn’t a rich town. It’s a hard-working Appalachian village of under 1,500 people. But when the creek overflows, nobody sits around waiting for a press conference out of Washington, D.C., or a mandate from the state capital in Columbus. ‎ ‎The response moves in waves because the connections are already wired: ‎On the local levels we see neighbor checks on neighbor. The volunteer fire department turns on the sirens, pulls out the high-water gear, and starts the door to door knocks. At the County level we have the Perry County 911 dispatch and Emergency Management Agency (EMA) start tracking water levels and routing equipment where it’s needed most. At the State level, If the county gets overwhelmed, pre set legal triggers immediately call in the Ohio EMA or the National Guard. ‎ ‎Government here doesn’t replace the community’s instinct to help itself; it validates it, organizes it, and backs it up with real resources. The system trusts the people on the ground to know their own roads. Here in Pakistan, the human spirit is just as generous, if not more so. The impulse toward hospitality, neighborly charity, and mutual support runs incredibly deep. When disaster strikes, ordinary citizens open their wallets and their homes without a second thought. It’s just what they do… ‎ ‎And Pakistan’s has one of the world’s top class military engineering, a massive national disaster agency (the NDMA), and incredible private charities. The raw capacity is immense. Yet, too often, there is a however a very heartbreaking disconnect between that high-level power and the family standing in ankle deep water in a local neighborhood. An ordinary citizen here once described the country to me using a metaphor I’ve never forgotten: a child that was never allowed to stand on its own feet. An infant isn’t helpless because it lacks potential. It’s helpless because it hasn’t been given the space to build muscle, fall over, adjust its balance, and try again. If an authority figure picks the child up every single time it tries to pull itself up, the child never learns to walk—not from a lack of ability, but because the environment denied it the chance to build strength. ‎ ‎That is how systemic learned dependency takes root: Central authorities assume total control, bypassing local municipal councils. Neighborhoods are given no real budget or authority to fix their own drainage or organize local response teams. And when a flood comes, citizens have no choice but to wait for distant, top-down relief. The authorities look at the waiting crowd and say, “See? The people can’t manage without us.” ‎We witness power centralized even further, deepening the exact helplessness it claims to fix. Over generations, people adapt to the system they are given. If a system rewards waiting for a political patron, people learn to wait for patrons. If it rewards local initiative, communities build habits of self-reliance. It is very easy to blame culture or public apathy for civic passivity, but that misses the point entirely. Culture simply reflects the structural incentives people are given to survive and adapt. It is nature vs nurture and we have a break down when these two things fail to promote a cohesiveness and inclusion of what is a community and what that actually means. ‎ ‎Across the globe, the relationship between state control and citizen participation varies wildly, proving that central authority does not have to mean public powerlessness. In China, a deeply centralized state framework actively structures and expects local neighborhood committees and civil volunteer groups to manage community-level crises. Across much of Europe, comprehensive state safety nets exist alongside highly empowered municipal councils and professionalized local volunteer forces.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the CPC Central Committee with General Secretary Xi Jinping at its core has put forward a series of new ideas, new thinking and new strategies centered on the major issue of the era—what kind of long-term governing Marxist party to build and how to build it—giving rise to Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building. As an important component of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building carries significant practical relevance and far-reaching guiding significance for strengthening the Party and the nation. It explicitly sets forth the “14 commitments”, namely: adhering leadership by the CPC as the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics; upholding the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee; exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance; staying true to the Party’s original aspiration and founding mission; taking strengthening the Party politically as the overarching principle; building cohesion and inner strength with the Party’s latest theory; forging strong Party spirit; improving the organizational system to ensure vertical coherence and effective implementation; cultivating high-caliber officials capable of shouldering the mission of national rejuvenation; making sustained and effective efforts to improve conduct; governing the whole Party with strict discipline; taking integrated steps to ensure that officials do not have the audacity, opportunity or desire to conduct corruption; governing the Party through systems and regulations, and ensuring that the political responsibility for Party self-governance is fulfilled. The “14 commitments” represent a concentrated summary of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s landmark, guiding new ideas and strategies on party building in the new era. They serve as the fundamental guideline for the CPC in strengthening party building, as well as a Chinese approach for political parties around the world to enhance self-improvement and state governance. China and Pakistan are ironclad friends and all-weather strategic cooperative partners. We are ready to deepen exchanges and mutual learning with Pakistan on party building and governance, work together to improve people’s well-being and promote prosperity and development, and accelerate the building of an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era. We must put people first and ensure that China-Pakistan cooperation delivers greater benefits to the two peoples. The CPC has always upheld building the Party for the public good and exercising state power for the people. Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building explicitly stresses “remaining true to the original aspiration and founding mission”, namely to seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation. Back in 2012, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that our Party is dedicated to serving the people wholeheartedly; the people’s desire for a better life is the goal we strive to work for. Guided by this profound devotion to the people, in the well-known poverty elimination campaign in China, General Secretary Xi Jinping set a shining example through personal commitment. He conducted more than 50 field research visits on poverty alleviation, covering all 14 contiguous poor regions across China. Based on thorough investigations, he put forward and applied the concept of targeted poverty alleviation, setting a brilliant example of integrating the power of truth with moral integrity. Under his leadership, China won the poverty alleviation campaign, built a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and embarked on a new journey of advancing national rejuvenation and building a great modern socialist country through Chinese modernization. Practice since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has fully demonstrated that the historic achievements and transformative changes in the cause of the Party and the country are fundamentally attributable to the steady guidance of General Secretary Xi Jinping as the core of the CPC Central Committee and of the Party as a whole, and to the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Under the strong leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping and the Party Central Committee, over 3 million first secretaries of CPC village committees and village-based officials, together with nearly 2 million township officials and millions of village officials, fought in unison to eliminate absolute poverty. This fully demonstrates the CPC’s capacity to mobilize resources to accomplish major undertakings, and embodies two core principles highlighted in Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building, which is “adhering to the leadership by the CPC as the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “upholding the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee. It is precisely because the CPC always puts people first and regards delivering people’s wellbeing as its paramount achievement that it enjoys enduring popular support and stands as the most reliable backbone for the Chinese people. Beyond seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, the CPC also strives for progress for humanity and the common good for the world. As General Secretary Xi Jinping noted, we Chinese not only aspire for good living for ourselves, but also hope people in other parts of the world lead a decent life. This is fully reflected in the development of China Pakistan relations in the new era. General Secretary Xi Jinping has always been concerned about and supported Pakistan’s national development and the improvement of people’s livelihoods. He and Pakistani leaders established the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries and reached important consensus on building an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era. General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed that China’s friendly policy toward Pakistan is always oriented toward all Pakistani people, the planning and layout of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) should take into account all regions of Pakistan, so that the fruits of development can benefit all the Pakistani people. To date, CPEC has brought in over 25.9 billion US dollars in direct investment, created more than 260,000 jobs, added over 8,000 MW of power generation capacity, built 510 kilometers of highways and 886 kilometers of core national power