Will the New Silk Road Help Revive the Islamic Golden Age?

National Geographic's Paul Salopek recently came upon a site in Pakistan's Salt Range where Muslim scientist Abu-Raihan Al-Biruni accurately measured the size of the earth in the 11th century. In it, Salopek sees the revival of the Islamic Golden Age. He characterizes the ancient Silk Road of as "dynamic but collapsed experiment in multilateralism". He thinks the revival of the Islamic Golden Age is linked to "China's 21st century version of the Silk Road". Salopek believes that President Donald Trump's four years in the White House and the COVID19 pandemic have accelerated America's decline and China's rise. Here's how he describes it in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times entitled "Shadows on the Silk Road: Finding omens of American decline on a long walk across Asia": 

"The most memorable archaeological ruins from the Silk Road’s glory years rot atop a hill about 60 miles southeast of Islamabad (the Capital of Pakistan). No monuments or signs mark the Nandana Fort. Few people go there. But it was where, in the early 11th century, the Central Asian scholar al-Biruni became the first person to measure, with astonishing precision, the size of Earth. His calculations, based on brilliant trigonometry, landed within 200 miles of the 24,902-mile circumference of our shared planet". 

Pakistan Postage Stamp Honoring Al-Biruni. Nandana Fort in Background


It was Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi who took Al-Biruni along with him after his conquest of India. Al-Biruni traveled all over India for 20 years, and studied Indian philosophy, Mathematics and Geography. Pakistan issued a postage stamp honoring Al-Biruni in 1973. The stamp has a picture of Al-Biruni with the ruins of Nandana Fort in the background.

China's New Silk Road. Source: China Daily

Salopek found a lot of history of the Islamic Golden Age as he traveled along the Silk Road. Here's a brief excerpt of his Op Ed in the New York Times:

"The Islamic Golden Age of science and art that predated the Italian Renaissance by 400 years was illuminated by Turkic and Persian thinkers from the eastern rim of the Abbasid Caliphate, in what is today Central Asia, western China and parts of Iran. ..... Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, a ninth-century genius who helped formulate the precepts of algebra, has lent his name to the word “algorithm.” A century later, the brilliant polymathic Abu Rayhan Muhammad al-Biruni wrote more than 140 manuscripts on everything from pharmaceuticals to the anthropology of India. (A typical al-Biruni title: “The Exhaustive Treatise on Shadows.”) Probably the most celebrated Silk Road sage of all was Abu Ali al-Hussein ibn Sina, revered in the West as Avicenna, who in the 11th century compiled an encyclopedia of healing that was still in use by European doctors as late as the 18th century. Avicenna’s “Canon of Medicine” accurately diagnosed diabetes by tasting sweetness in urine. Its pharmacopoeia cataloged more than 800 remedies. A millennium ago, Avicenna advocated quarantines to control epidemics. What would he make, I wondered, of the willed ignorance of today’s anti-maskers in the United States?"  

Salopek sees parallels between America's Trumpism and India's Hindu Nationalism. He is just as pessimistic about India as he is about his home country of the United States. Here's what he sees from the top of Nanada Fort ruins:  

 "I climbed a broken fort wall and peered east. Ahead unspooled 17 months of hiking across India, yet another democracy cartwheeling into an abyss of right-wing populism. Riding a wave of Hindu nationalism, one Indian state all but criminalized marriages between Hindu and Muslim citizens".  

From the top of Nandana Fort, Salopek also sees China which he describes in the following words: 

"In the blue distance beyond sprawled China. Its economic output in 2019, according to one report, hit 67 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product. The gap between China and the United States is shrinking as China is the only major economy expected to report economic growth for 2020 despite the pandemic. And brawling with itself at some crossroad truck stop far over the horizon lay my lost homeland". 

Here's Pakistani Nobel Laureate Dr. Abdus Salam on  the reasons for the decline of science in the Muslim world: 

"Islam was very strongly research-minded until about Year 1000 AD. Then there was a big battle between the Sufis and the theologians (established religious leaders). Theologians won that battle. They (theologians) put an embargo on independent thinking in the Islamic world. That started the decline of science in Islamic world. They killed off (Mansur) Al-Hallaj and many others. Islam has no theologians (established priesthood) but you still need a stamp of approval from the religious establishment. They control the population (people) by declaring all dissenters non-Muslim (excommunicate them). This is still going on".

https://youtu.be/cXDehJzuXAg

  Related Links:


Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

China's New Silk Road

Is Fareed Zakaria Souring on India?

US Needs to Promote Democracy at Home

Rise and Fall of the Islamic Civilization

Al-Khwarizmi: Origins of Artificial Intelligence in Islamic Golden Age

Pakistani Woman Leads Global Gender Parity Campaign

Muslims Have Few Nobel Prizes

Ibn Khaldun: The Father of Modern Social Sciences

Obama Speaks to the Muslim World

Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi

Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

What is Not Taught in School

How Islamic Inventors Changed the World

Jinnah's Pakistan Booms Amidst Doom and Gloom



Comments

Riaz Haq said…
China’s Ascent
The rise of China will have far-reaching consequences—the world should get ready
By Keyu Jin


https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/06/rise-of-china-jin.htm


China in 2040 will look on the face of things to be a mighty economic power. Under plausible projections, it will have firmly established itself as the largest economy in the world, with 60 to 70 percent of the US income level. But in 20 years, China will still be a developing economy by many measures—its financial development will lag its economic development, and many economic and policy distortions may still persist.

In that scenario, the world must be prepared for China to be its first systemic emerging market economy. It should brace for greater volatility and uncertainty as China becomes more intermeshed with global financial markets. It should prepare for a China that emits shocks distinctive to developing economies—but on a much larger scale and with greater thrust and impetus.

Every significant policy move, stock market panic, and cyclical upswing or downswing in China can plausibly diffuse and propagate through the web of financial networks that links nations. In China today, 70 percent of investors in capital markets are retail investors, quick to react to noise and changes in sentiment. Mercurial stock markets and volatile exchange rates may become the rule, not the exception.

Currently, China is already inadvertently sending shocks to the rest of the world, despite its small international financial exposure. My own research with Yi Huang shows that it is not only policy shocks (monetary and fiscal) that spill over to the rest of the world but also the shocks of policy uncertainty.

In a country where reforms big and small happen on a regular basis, where policy moves often instigate cyclical fluctuations rather than subdue them, where policy direction and strategy are based on experimentation rather than experience, uncertainty can be a first-order menace to overly sensitized financial markets.

Our research shows that during 2000–18, Chinese policy uncertainty shocks significantly affected not only economic variables, such as world industrial production and commodity prices, but also key financial variables, including global stock prices and bond yields, the MSCI World Index, and financial volatility.

Now imagine China in 2040, more consequential and with a greater number of channels open to the rest of the world—whether cross-border bank lending, portfolio holdings, capital flows, or a more dominant renminbi. In that scenario, shocks emanating from China would not only propagate more swiftly and potently, they would also be amplified and expanded through its increasing and diverse financial channels.

The rise of China today bears much similarity to the ascent of the United States in the late 19th century. Although it was growing rapidly and catching up with European countries, it had the developing economy malaise of unsophisticated capital markets. Corporate governance was riddled with problems and banking crises occurred regularly; weak financial intermediaries and a shortage of financial assets, along with the absence of a lender of last resort, prevented the efficient mobilization of capital. The vagaries of the US economy and the financial panic in 1873 were fully transmitted to Europe and Great Britain, which had significant exposure to the US economy.

Riaz Haq said…
South-East Asian countries are trapped between two superpowers
Balancing China and America will be tough

https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2020/11/17/south-east-asian-countries-are-trapped-between-two-superpowers?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1-1Gx9kWGSYKszhviyIPUqXSlIyMaaQNZd7Zjl7awoa2vcdQHuPFlAjyM


NO PART OF the world risks suffering more from the economic, strategic and military rivalry now playing out between the United States and China than the 11 nations of South-East Asia. And that rivalry will intensify in 2021.

On the one hand, many in the region are wary of President Xi Jinping’s mission to reclaim for China the centrality it enjoyed in East Asia before the imperial depredations by the West and Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not just that China is aggressively challenging the maritime and territorial claims of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, through which the majority of China’s seaborne trade passes. It is also that Mr Xi’s call for “Asian people to run the affairs of Asia” sounds like code for China running Asia. As a Chinese foreign minister once told a gathering of the ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN): “China is a big country and [you] are small countries, and that is just a fact.”

On the other hand, while ASEAN members welcome America as the dominant military power in the region to counter China’s growing heft, they know that conflict would be disastrous for them. South-East Asian diplomats did not loudly cheer the anti-China rhetoric of President Donald Trump’s administration, which is unlikely to soften much under Joe Biden. And no wonder. Many of the region’s governments are hostile to democracy, and few see America’s political model as one to emulate.

Above all, China is too close and already too mighty to turn against. It is by far South-East Asia’s biggest trading partner and its second-biggest investor, behind Japan. ASEAN’s prosperity is as bound to China as its supply chains are. And as Sebastian Strangio, a perceptive observer of the region, points out in a new book, “In the Dragon’s Shadow”, South-East Asia has a powerful stake in China’s growth and stability: historically, turmoil in China has spread instability southward.

So, how not to get caught between the two giants? The region’s strategists remind themselves that, when it comes to great-power rivalry, things have been worse. At the height of the cold war, bloody conflict in Indo-China, along with communist insurgencies elsewhere, threatened to reduce South-East Asian autonomy to zero. Those concerns, and the need for a mechanism to manage their mutual mistrust, were catalysts for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore to form ASEAN more than 50 years ago. And today? At least, the strategists say, with black humour, China and the United States have not carved up the region between them.

As for 2021, the region’s experience in managing great-power rivalry will come to the fore. South-East Asia has lived under China’s armpit for millennia, and ASEAN’s member countries have dealt with the American presence since the second world war. The approach will be to “hedge, balance and bandwagon” between the two, says Bilahari Kausikan, formerly Singapore’s top diplomat. Students of international relations are usually taught that only one of these three approaches is possible at any time. Yet pragmatic South-East Asians, Mr Kausikan argues, have a knack for doing all three. One example in 2021: just as the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte will keep wooing Mr Xi over Chinese investment, expect a rapid improvement in once-strained military ties with America. South-East Asia in 2021 will also do more to invite other powers, notably Japan, South Korea, Australia and India, to share in both regional prosperity and security.

Riaz Haq said…
South-East Asian countries are trapped between two superpowers
Balancing China and America will be tough

https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2020/11/17/south-east-asian-countries-are-trapped-between-two-superpowers?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1-1Gx9kWGSYKszhviyIPUqXSlIyMaaQNZd7Zjl7awoa2vcdQHuPFlAjyM

So, how not to get caught between the two giants? The region’s strategists remind themselves that, when it comes to great-power rivalry, things have been worse. At the height of the cold war, bloody conflict in Indo-China, along with communist insurgencies elsewhere, threatened to reduce South-East Asian autonomy to zero. Those concerns, and the need for a mechanism to manage their mutual mistrust, were catalysts for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore to form ASEAN more than 50 years ago. And today? At least, the strategists say, with black humour, China and the United States have not carved up the region between them.

As for 2021, the region’s experience in managing great-power rivalry will come to the fore. South-East Asia has lived under China’s armpit for millennia, and ASEAN’s member countries have dealt with the American presence since the second world war. The approach will be to “hedge, balance and bandwagon” between the two, says Bilahari Kausikan, formerly Singapore’s top diplomat. Students of international relations are usually taught that only one of these three approaches is possible at any time. Yet pragmatic South-East Asians, Mr Kausikan argues, have a knack for doing all three. One example in 2021: just as the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte will keep wooing Mr Xi over Chinese investment, expect a rapid improvement in once-strained military ties with America. South-East Asia in 2021 will also do more to invite other powers, notably Japan, South Korea, Australia and India, to share in both regional prosperity and security.

Hedging, balancing and bandwagoning rests, admittedly, on one big assumption: that neither America nor China really intends to decouple their two economies entirely. That calculation is probably right, and even if hard-nosed competition and negotiation between the two powers reconfigures global supply chains, South-East Asians still intend to profit from that.

Even so, it is a gamble, and other risks loom. Not the least of them is maintaining ASEAN solidarity—China has already tried to drive a wedge into the organisation by turning Cambodia and Laos, for now, into client states. Mr Xi’s increasing claims to speak for all ethnic Chinese overseas, including 30m South-East Asians of Chinese ancestry, raise the risk of nativist demagogues using anti-China feelings to whip up ethnic hatred.

Perhaps the most nail-biting risk of all is of some unintended clash between China and America over the South China Sea. In the event of military conflict, the hedge, the balance and the bandwagon will not get anyone very far at all.
Riaz Haq said…
Focus on Pakistan Navy by Ejaz Haider

https://www.thefridaytimes.com/focus-on-pakistan-navy/

Ahmed Ibn-e Majid was an Arab navigator and cartographer whose book, “The Book of the Benefits of the Principles and Foundations of Seamanship,” was used by navigators right up to the 18th Century. The book discussed the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of ports from East Africa to Indonesia, accounts of the monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for professional navigators.
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Pakistan Navy is demonstrably the most neglected service. There are reasons for this state of affairs, all of them bad.

One, as the largest and senior-most service, the Pakistan Army has traditionally dominated military-operational thinking and plans.

Two, the Army’s politico-praetorian streak has added another dimension to its heft and further ensured it gets the lion’s share of defence allocations.

Three, air and naval platforms are almost always big ticket items and require monies that are difficult to find in a poor country like Pakistan.

Four, historically, even when Muslim empires dominated large parts of the world, the ruling dynasts — barring some attempts by the Ottomans — neglected naval power. To stress the salience of this point, one only need contrast the naval exploits of Italian city-states, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English with, for instance, the Muslim rulers of India.

What makes this Muslim reticence even more surprising is the fact that Arabs were great seafarers and navigators and traded with the littoral states of the Indian Ocean. For example, Ahmed Ibn-e Majid was an Arab navigator and cartographer whose book, “The Book of the Benefits of the Principles and Foundations of Seamanship,” was used by navigators right up to the 18th Century. The book discussed the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of ports from East Africa to Indonesia, accounts of the monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for professional navigators. [NB: for a detailed account of how difficult seafaring was and the five different seafaring traditions in the ancient world, the first chapter of Daniel Headrick’s Power Over Peoples… is a great primer. I am thankful to Dr Ilhan Niaz for pointing it to me.]


Five, this land-focused approach to warfare has continued in Pakistan. As mentioned above, this is due to the power of the army which (a) remains bound by traditional thinking and (b) has stymied any fresh thinking about war itself, including maritime security and the importance of naval power to a state’s offensive and defensive capabilities.

As I said earlier, these are all bad reasons.

Yet, despite these handicaps, the PN has acted professionally and remains prepared for the defence of territorial waters. To expect any more from it would be like expecting a sedan to win a Formula 1 race. Accordingly, the Pakistan Navy’s performance has to be evaluated within the functions and framework of a brown-, or at most green-water navy.

The PN is holding its 7th AMAN (Peace) exercise off the coast of Karachi in February. AMAN exercises began in March 2007. The exercise, which has harbour and sea phases, has drawn naval contingents from around the world. This year’s new entrant is a Russian naval contingent from its Baltic Fleet.

According to the Russian Navy’s website, Russia plans to send a frigate, a patrol ship, a tugboat, a sea-based helicopter and some other units. This is also the first time since 2011 that Russia will take part in a naval exercise with naval contingents from NATO countries. The last time Russian naval continent participated in naval drills with NATO vessels was in 2011 in a NATO-led exercise codenamed Bold Monarch held off the coast of Spain.

Exercise AMAN focuses on interoperability with other navies in anti-Piracy and counterterrorism operations. The drill allows navies to discuss best practices and establish operational relationships towards the common goal of maritime security.

Riaz Haq said…
How did the present-day population structure emerge from the one that existed in the deep past? We and other ancient DNA laboratories found in 2016 that the formation of the present-day West Eurasian population was propelled by the spread of food producers. Farming began between twelve and eleven thousand years ago in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, where local hunter-gatherers began domesticating most of the plants and animals many West Eurasians still depend upon today, including wheat, barley, rye, peas, cows, pigs, and sheep. After around nine thousand years ago, farming began spreading west to present-day Greece and roughly at the same time began spreading east, reaching the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan. Within Europe, farming spread west along the Mediterranean coast to Spain, and northwest to Germany through the Danube River valley, until it reached Scandinavia in the north and the British Isles in the west—the most extreme places where this type of economy was practical.


Reich, David. Who We Are and How We Got Here (p. 118). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Riaz Haq said…
The great Himalayas were formed around ten million years ago by the collision of the Indian continental plate, moving northward through the Indian Ocean, with Eurasia. India today is also the product of collisions of cultures and people. Consider farming. The Indian subcontinent is one of the breadbaskets of the world—today it feeds a quarter of the world’s population—and it has been one of the great population centers ever since modern humans expanded across Eurasia after fifty thousand years ago. Yet farming was not invented in India. Indian farming today is born of the collision of the two great agricultural systems of Eurasia. The Near Eastern winter rainfall crops, wheat and barley, reached the Indus Valley Valley sometime after nine thousand years ago according to archaeological evidence—as attested, for example, in ancient Mehrgarh on the western edge of the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan.13 Around five thousand years ago, local farmers succeeded in breeding these crops to adapt to monsoon summer rainfall patterns, and the crops spread into peninsular India.14 The Chinese monsoon summer rainfall crops of rice and millet also reached peninsular India around five thousand years ago. India may have been the first place where the Near Eastern and the Chinese crop systems collided. Language is another blend. The Indo-European languages of the north of India are related to the languages of Iran and Europe. The Dravidian languages, spoken mostly by southern Indians, are not closely related to languages outside South Asia. There are also Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by groups living in the mountains fringing the north of India, and small


pockets of tribal groups in the east and center that speak Austroasiatic languages related to Cambodian and Vietnamese, and that are thought to descend from the languages spoken by the peoples who first brought rice farming to South Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. Words borrowed from ancient Dravidian and Austroasiatic languages, which linguists can detect as they are not typical of Indo-European languages, are present in the Rig Veda, implying that these languages have been in contact in India for at least three or four thousand years.15

Reich, David. Who We Are and How We Got Here (pp. 151-152). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Riaz Haq said…
After days of public silence and private agonizing over what to do about Ms. Greene — who has endorsed the executions of top Democrats, suggested that school shootings were staged and said that a space laser controlled by Jewish financiers started a wildfire — the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, issued a tortured statement that harshly denounced her past statements but then argued that she should face no consequences for them.

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” Mr. McCarthy said.

The contortions over what to do about Ms. Greene came days after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the most powerful Republican in Washington, denounced her as a threat to his party and as more senators followed his lead.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-marjorie-taylor-greene.html

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Recently, Greene met with a far-right British commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has described migrants as “cockroaches” and said she doesn’t care if they die. Greene told her, “I would love to trade you for some of our white people here that have no appreciation for our country.” She described the results of the 2018 midterms as “an Islamic invasion of our government.” Greene endorsed calls for the execution of prominent Democrats and agreed with Facebook posts claiming that the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were hoaxes. She harassed one of the Parkland massacre’s young survivors.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/opinion/marjorie-taylor-greene-gop.html
Riaz Haq said…
The spatial competition between containerised rail and sea transport in Eurasia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0334-6

In the future, the BRI will be significant to the integration of economic trade in Eurasia, following the premise that land and sea transport should find a spatial balance. In fact, analysis of the competition and cooperation between land and sea transport can also be of theoretical significance for transport geography. This paper presents a LSTSB model based on the conceptualised Eurasia and simulates different land–sea transport scenarios. We then identify the transport balance lines by applying the model to Eurasia and present the partition of land and sea transport dominated areas in line with the theories of geopolitics.

The main insights are as follows:

Four scenarios based on different locations of destination, different freight costs, different values of a container’s goods and different speeds of transport are simulated using the theoretical model. They show that these basic factors influence the spatial balance lines of transportation. The results indicate that land transport is relatively competitive with sea transport but that this depends on different factors. Land transport may be undervalued at present due to long-term cooperation behaviour between governments or enterprises with maritime companies.

The case study shows that in terms of freight costs, maritime transport has an obvious advantage in Eurasia. The transport spatial balance line divides the Eurasian continent into a land and sea transport competitive pattern with an area ratio of 1:2. However, this ratio changes to 1:1 when we take time costs into consideration. Results show that the Economic Belt on road has economic feasibility and rationality.

Furthermore, the spatially competitive pattern of land–sea transport in Eurasia is highly consistent with geopolitical theories. This paper presents a partition of transport areas based on the calculation of balance lines, showing the land transport preferred area, the sea transport preferred area and the land–sea transport indifference area. The partition shows that the China–Russia–EU region, located in the land transport preferred area and the land–sea transport indifference area, is the key pivot area of integration influencing the current economic geographic imbalance in Eurasia. Further, it can serve as the analytic basis underpinning the necessity of increasing cooperation between China and the EU under the BRI, which is in the land–sea indifference area. Thus, the LSTSB model can bring a new perspective to the discussion of the spatial pattern of geopolitics and geo-economics in Eurasia.
Riaz Haq said…
Impact of Transport Cost and Travel Time on Trade under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
Khalid Mehmood Alam


https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jat/2019/7178507/


China is the second biggest economy in the world and almost 40% of its trade in 2016 is transported through the South China Sea. China needs a small, secure, and low-cost path to trade with Europe and the Middle East and China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a feasible solution to this requirement. This research analyzes the effect of CPEC on trade in terms of transport cost and travel time. In addition, the study compares the existing routes and the new CPEC route. The research methodology consists of qualitative and descriptive statistical methods. The variables (transport cost and travel time) are calculated and compared for both the existing route and new CPEC route. The results show that transport cost for 40-foot container between Kashgar and destination ports in the Middle East is decreased by about $1450 dollars and for destination ports in Europe is decreased by $1350 dollars. Additionally, travel time is decreased by 21 to 24 days for destination ports in the Middle East and 21 days for destination ports in Europe. The distance from Kashgar to destination ports in the Middle East and Europe is decreased by 11,000 to 13,000 km.

Transportation is the shifting of goods by truck, rail, road, and sea and is reasoned as an important indicator for economic development [1]. Transport has two main parts. The first part represents vehicles that are either van, truck, rails, airplanes, or ships and second part represents the transport infrastructure such as roads, highways, seaways, airways, and railway tracks on which transport runs smoothly. In the recent days, both parts of transportation are considered as an important factor of trade and help in reducing transportation cost and travel time. The selection of transport mode for delivery of goods within less time and minimum cost is important to maximize the profit. Every state tries its best to discover short trade routes that can reduce trade cost and transfer time. To enhance their trade, countries invest in transport infrastructures like roads and rails and adequate transport infrastructure can potentially reduce transport cost and travel time. Transport cost and travel time are considered as the most important among all factors [2].

Shipping industry plays an significant part in the development of trade and about 80% of world trade is transported by the international shipping industry [3, 4]. The import and export of goods on large scale are not possible without shipping [5]. China is the second biggest economy and energy user in the world and safety of the oil supply chain stay the essential idea of China’s strategies [6]. China is importing about 83% of oil supplies by sea, out of which 77% are functioning through the Strait of Malacca, a possible bottleneck for China [7]. There are some factors like China’s regional disputes, pirate incidences, and geopolitics that make the Strait of Malacca as an attentive weakness for China and may stop economic development in case of any unanticipated events [8, 9]. About 60% of world pirate occurrences take place in the Strait of Malacca and presence of the Indian and US armadas in the seaway rises serious security concerns and in case of any unforeseen actions can affect trade and economic supplies of China [10–12]. To overcome these challenges, China wants to get access to deep water through Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will link the city of Kashgar in Western China and the Gwadar Port in Pakistan by developing a transport infrastructure network comprising road and rail. Kashgar has great economic opportunities for the shortest land access to the local markets of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan [13].


Riaz Haq said…
6th Academic Forum on China-Pakistan Scientific, Technical and Economic Cooperation held

http://en.ce.cn/Insight/202111/28/t20211128_37121821.shtml


“This year marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Pak-China diplomatic ties and there has been a renewed focus on cooperation in the fields of higher education and science and technology. Realizing the importance of higher education, science and technology, and innovation, both countries had taken great initiatives or cooperation in these fields," Mr. Moin ul Haque, Pakistani Ambassador to China highlighted on the 6th Academic Forum on China-Pakistan Scientific, Technical and Economic Cooperation under the “Belt and Road” Initiative held on Saturday.

In 1976, Pakistan and China signed an agreement on scientific and technical cooperation and so far under this agreement, 18 protocols of bilateral scientific and technological corporations have been implemented. Now both sides are working on formulating the 19th protocol. The ambassador explained that the 19th protocol would focus on emerging technologies in the areas of smart agriculture, nanotechnology, environmental protection, energy conservation, and storage system design.

As CPEC moves to industrialization and high-quality development, China-Pakistan cooperation in the fields of higher education and science and technology assumes greater importance and will have a new dimension. The Ambassador suggested both countries intensify institutional linkages between academic and research institutions to do focus research and provide guidance to industries businessmen on engaging and emerging trends in technologies.

Mr. Xie Guoxiang, Minister Counselor, Embassy of China in Pakistan underlined that scientific, technological, and economic cooperation and exchanges are an important part of omni-directional, multi-field and in-depth exchanges and cooperation between China and Pakistan. The intergovernmental scientific and technological cooperation mechanisms including CPEC JWG on science and technology have guided the direction and gathered strength for deepening cooperation in scientific and technological innovation between the two countries.

Mr. Xie Guoxiang further maintained that "China will do its best to firmly support Pakistan to embark on a development path in line with its national conditions and firmly support Pakistan's grand vision of realizing a 'new Pakistan'."

Dr. Talat Shabbir, China-Pakistan Study Centre (CPSC), Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad (ISSI), and Dr. Di Yuna, Dr. Di Yuna, Executive Director of BTBU PSC, signed the memorandum of academic cooperation on behalf of both sides.

Mr. Wang Zihai, Honorary Investment Counselor of Pakistan, President of Pakistan China Chamber of Commerce and Industry, mentioned that CPEC is not only the game changer for Pakistan but also a major project to change the regional situation. Mutual benefit and win-win results can be achieved by actively attracting other SCO member states to participate in CPEC construction.

As part of the forum, BRI Youth Forum has received a total of 45 contributions from postgraduates from 24 universities/institutions. Excellent papers are selected by the evaluation experts, and 15 students are approved to give speeches at the forum.

The forum was guided by the Department of International Cooperation, China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), Beijing Association for Science and Technology (BAST), Embassy of China in Pakistan, Embassy of Pakistan Beijing, and jointly organized by Beijing Technology and Business University (BTBU), Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) and ECO Science Foundation (ECOSF).
Riaz Haq said…
What the Iranian scholar Albiruni said about Hindus, echoed centuries later by Vivekananda

In this excerpt from his book ‘Dharma’, Chaturvedi Badrinath examines the first ever dialogue between Islamic and Hindu thought.

https://scroll.in/article/938208/what-the-iranian-scholar-albiruni-said-about-hindus-echoed-centuries-later-by-vivekananda

Albiruni's observations on Hindus:


The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner. According to their belief, there is no other country on earth but theirs, no other race of man but theirs, and no created beings besides them have any knowledge or science whatsoever...

...all their fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them – against all foreigners. They call them mlechha, ie impure, and forbid any connection with them, be it by intermarriage or any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby, they think, they would be polluted.

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The earliest, indeed the very first, dialogue between a Muslim scientist and Hindu thought took place when Albiruni (971-1039) arrived in India in the second decade of the eleventh century in circumstances that were rather ironical. He came as a camp follower of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (967-1030). Whereas the chief purpose of Sultan Mahmud, the king of Ghazni, was to plunder the immense wealth in the form of gold and money at some of the more famous Hindu temples, the sole aim of Albiruni was to gain from the immense riches of Indian philosophies and the sciences.

That was probably also the time when Indian sciences had, on the whole, no longer anything of theoretical importance to add to their earlier great achievements. The most creative period of science in India was over by a century or two, perhaps. None of the sources Albiruni mentions in his Ta’rikh-ul-Hind was contemporary.

Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan Preserves Its Buddhist Heritage Amidst Grave Challenges

https://www.eurasiareview.com/22122022-pakistan-preserves-its-buddhist-heritage-amidst-grave-challenges/

Despite an ever-present and growing threat from an iconoclastic fringe in Pakistan, successive governments in Islamabad have managed to preserve the Islamic country’s Buddhist heritage that exists as archaeological findings.

This is all the more creditable since the remnants of 2,200-year-old Gandhara Buddhist civilization are still substantially intact in the Swat Valley of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK) though KPK is the epicenter of present-day Islamic terrorism. Among Pakistan’s provinces, it is the KPK which bears the brunt of the fury of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Interestingly, news of the discovery of a 2200 year-old Buddhist temple at Barikot in KPK (counted among the “Top 10 Discoveries of 2022” by Archeology Magazine) came as TTP gunmen and Pakistani commandoes fought a pitched battle at Bannu, a town in KPK. 33 terrorists and two commandoes were killed in the shootout.

According to Sana Jamal of Gulf News, the 2nd Century BC temple at Barikot was discovered jointly by archaeology professor, Luca Maria Olivieri of Ca’ Foscari of the University of Venice, the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums KP Province, and the Swat Museum. It is the oldest known Buddhist temple in the Swat region that was a center for the exchange of goods and culture between the civilizations of the Middle East, Central Asia and India from 6th Century BC.

“The temple’s ruins are around ten feet tall and consist of a ceremonial platform that once housed a stupa or dome often found in Buddhist architecture. The structure includes a smaller stupa at the front, a room or cell for monks, a podium or pillar, a staircase, vestibule rooms, and a public courtyard that overlooks a road,” Jamal says. A stupa is a Buddhist structure containing holy relics.

Swat is also home to the renowned Dharmarajika stupa, locally known as Chir Tope, located near Taxila, a seat of Buddhist learning between the 3 rd., Century BC and 7th.Century AD.

Pakistan has been working hard to let the world know of its pre-Islamic past, which includes Mohenjodaro of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, the Buddhist University at Taxila, Gandhara art and Buddhist stupas containing sacred relics.

During the tenure of Pakistan High Commissioner Seema Baloch in Sri Lanka (2011-13), Pakistani Buddhist relics were, for the first time, brought to Sri Lanka and publicly exhibited at various places in the island. A group of 40 Buddhist monks were taken to see sites of Buddhist interest in Pakistan. This did help correct (albeit only to a small extent), the image that Pakistan had nothing to offer Buddhists and had little or nothing to do with Buddhism.

In June 2016, Pakistan High Commission held an exhibition of Gandhara Art in Colombo, in which coffee-table books in both English and Sinhala sold like hotcakes. “I had to bring in replenishments from the High Commission several times to meet the constant demand,” remarked the then Press Attache, Intesar Ahmad Sulehry. Later the High Commission showed a documentary on Gandhara Art jointly made by a group of Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Indians.

Pakistan is now 95% Muslim and Islam is the official religion, but Buddhism once flourished in the KPK, then called Gandhara. The region was subject to Achaemenian Persia in the 6th and 5th centuries BC and was conquered by Alexander the Great in 4th Century BC. It was thereafter ruled by the Mauryan dynasty of India, under which it became a center for the spread of Buddhism to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Gandhara was successively ruled by Indo-Greeks, Shakas, Parthians, and Kushans. After its conquest by Mahmud of Gazni in 11th century AD , it came under a series of Muslim dynasties.
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan Preserves Its Buddhist Heritage Amidst Grave Challenges

https://www.eurasiareview.com/22122022-pakistan-preserves-its-buddhist-heritage-amidst-grave-challenges/


Gandhara was the home of a distinctive art style that was a mixture of Indian Buddhist and Greco-Roman influences. Depictions of the Buddha and Bodhisatvas (Enlightened Beings) were the mainstay of Gandhara art. Sculptures that have survived the ravages of time and the depredations of iconoclasts, show various aspects of the Buddha’s life.

However, it is the representation of the Buddha in human form that went on to influence art in China, Japan, Korea, and other parts of East Asia. It is said that the Gandhara region has the world’s only statue of a “fasting Buddha” – a Buddha in skin and bones with ribs jutting out.

The ancient Buddhist sites and the art therein, which had been neglected for centuries, were discovered by British archeologists in the colonial period. Their work was continued by Pakistani archeologists after independence in 1947. Successive Pakistani governments, except the one led by Gen.Zia-ul-Haq (1978-88), had sustained the archeological and conservation projects.

However, in 2006-2007, the Taliban banned the preservation of these objects because even the existence of idols in the midst of Muslims was “haram” or forbidden. The Taliban damaged the face of a giant Buddha statue in Swat. However, the then President, Gen.Pervez Musharraf, stood like a rock behind the conservationists and negotiated the withdrawal of the Taliban from their destructive project. Archeologists and art lovers in Pakistan and abroad breathed a sigh of relief.

Pakistan also started exhibiting Gandhara art in various places in the world, including the US. At an exhibition in New York of Gandhara art brought from the Lahore and Karachi museums, the then Pakistani Ambassador in the UN, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, waxed eloquent about the Buddha. He said that the Buddha was a human being whose “ethereal qualities and enormous wisdom showed the path to several others like Gandhi down the centuries.”

In 2016, Pakistani archeologists discovered an ancient site at Bhamala in Swat in which there was a 14 meter (48 ft) long Kanjur stone “Sleeping Buddha” statue. This 3 rd.Century AD statue is the world’s oldest Sleeping Buddha statue.

When the finding was presented to the world, the President of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) party, Imran Khan, said: ” It is a world heritage site and because of that, people will come for religious tourism and see these places. The majority of the Pakistani population wants such sites restored.”

Apart from the government, individual Pakistanis have also rendered yeoman service in preserving and protecting Buddhist sites against depredations by idol thieves and smugglers. Osman Ulasyar had stopped local boys from playing cricket in a field full of Ist. Centry AD Buddhist stupas. And, at this own cost, he built a 300 ft wall to protect the stupas.

Reuters quoted Dr.Abdul Samad, Director of Archeology and Museums in Khyber Pakhtunwala province as saying: ” Gandhara was the center of religious harmony. It is here that one finds Greek, Roman, Persian, Hindu and Buddhist gods in a single panel in the Peshawar museum.”

But tragically, the common Pakistani’s awareness of his non-Islamic past is either non-existent or pathetically low because school history books have blacked out the pre-Islamic past. This grievous flaw will need to be corrected at the earliest in the interest of the preservation of Gandhara art and the enormous tourist potential which is in it.

The other danger that lurks constantly, is the destruction, stealing and smuggling of ancient artifacts by treasure thieves. The government has armed itself with the Antiquities Act to protect the sites and also to prevent domestic and international sale of these antiquities. Success in this area is by no means insignificant since the Gandhara sites are still there for all to see. Many of the artefacts are kept safely in museums.

Riaz Haq said…
The road that's the 'Eighth World Wonder'

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230903-the-karakoram-highway-the-road-thats-the-eighth-world-wonder


The 1,300km Karakoram Highway cuts through some of the most astounding rock faces on the planet. It's a road trip of dreams, yet few have ever heard of it or how it came to be.

Crisp mountain air rushed in through the car window as I drove past jagged mountain landscapes. Despite summer being in full swing, massive amounts of snowpack still clung to the 7,000m peaks. Glacial waterfalls dripped down to feed the aquamarine river below, through Pakistan's high-altitude Hunza Valley that was aptly termed "Shangri La" by British novelist James Hilton.

I was driving the Karakoram Highway (KKH), which cuts through some of the most astounding rock faces on the planet. Often coined the "Eighth Wonder of the World", it's a road trip of dreams, yet few have ever heard of it, or how it came to be.

The KKH was once a leg of the Silk Road, with its foundations built by locals centuries ago. However, it wasn't until 1978 – after nearly 20 years of construction by more than 24,000 Pakistani and Chinese workers – that it was officially inaugurated for vehicles, which brought trade, tourism and ease of travel to this remote part of the world.

The 1,300km highway extends from the small city of Hasan Abdal near Pakistan's capital of Islamabad to Kashgar in China's autonomous Xinjiang region via Khunjerab, the highest paved border crossing in the world at about 4,700m. But I was drawn to the 194km stretch of the highway that runs through the Hunza Valley, a region surrounded by the Karakoram Mountains that give the highway its name. This impossibly beautiful section is where you can see pristine glaciers, alpine lakes and snow-capped peaks right from the comfort of your ride. However, as alluring as the journey is, it's the incredible people and traditions of the Hunza Valley that make this part of the highway so special.

Nestled in the Gilgit Baltistan territory between Xinjiang and Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, Hunza was mostly cut off from the world until the 20th Century due to the formidable geography. Primarily home to the Burusho and Wakhi people, the remote region has its own languages, music and culture that's unlike anything you'd find in Pakistan – or anywhere else in the world.

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