China also provides technology, machinery, semi-finished goods, components, and raw materials at a very favorable price. I don't have exact numbers but Pakistan imports over 20 billion worth of goods and services from China annually. Without China, the economy of Pakistan will crash. Pakistan can import from other sources but probably at double the price which will put a huge strain on the current account balance of an already bad economy.
It is getting off topic (this is TR geopolitics thread) so this will be my last post on this matter here, but I disagree.
It is demand and supply in the end (and what basis, absolute threadbare requirements and elasticities a country has for those in the end).
Countries can (and often do) insulate and cleave large parts of their demand in response to growing bills they simply cannot front anymore (or in North Korea's case prevent them from even starting in first place).
Ability and buffer to do this is commensurate to the social dynamic of their population in the end (how much of the population is "globally" norms referenced and operating and psychologically reliant on this in whichever level.....versus how much are not), which is a complicated thing to get into if you are not from the country itself or have studied it closely.
Factors like why Pakistan perseveres with its landowner system (i.e almost no land redistributed to small farmers on basis of the theft that happened on this in the colonial era)...which essentially gridlocks extra hard its political channels and basic labour market like no other in even the region. Their belly was never big and they can tighten the belt much more (given they have lived entire lives doing this anyway) when the landowners with big sticks coerce them following instructions and price signalling from the urban elite etc.
Pakistan's market capitalisation falling from 50 billion USD to 30 billion recently in under 1 year time is telling of the larger haircut on finance spread/exposure that is entrenching as reality for them this decade at least. i.e 120 times behind India (i.e 20 times behind per person) in basic economic expansion impetus.
But a severe economic malaise and rut (and even some series of crashes and defaults that are weathered when they happen) entrenching a low income stasis.... is different to implosion in the end for that same reason (this society simply does not exist in the developed world or parts of world that have seen higher consumption for some decades now per person).
China's significance extends more in the strategic and geopolitical sense (and that will have a basic cross over effect for Pakistan's low income perseverance much like in case of North Korea - given say the nuclear weapons factor).... much like the US provided to Pakistan in the cold war era preceding this one......but that is different matter to economic-based collapses given the social factors that are not expressed well in economics.
The final quantity per person of what US, China provided and provide economically in Pakistan is very small in larger sense of things that their largely undocumented time, labour and effort is involved in. The provision is far more significant in separate matter (involving far fewer people in the end)....but it is not a macroeconomic one, not even close.
tr.wikipedia.org
