For decades, Pakistan has searched for the right formula for governance. We have experimented with parliamentary democracy, military rule and various forms of hybrid arrangements.
Governments have changed, policies have been announced and institutions have been restructured. Yet one problem has remained remarkably persistent: the state often struggles to turn policies into sustained results.
This is where China presents an interesting case—not because Pakistan should copy China’s political system, but because China offers some important lessons about how a state can develop the capacity to plan, learn, adapt and deliver.
China’s rise is one of the defining transformations of our time. Over the past few decades, it has moved from being a relatively poor country to becoming one of the world’s major economic and technological powers. There are many explanations for this transformation, but governance is an important part of the story.
German sinologist Sebastian Heilmann describes China’s approach as an experimental and adaptive model of governance. Instead of assuming that every policy will work perfectly from the beginning, policies can be tested, evaluated and modified. Successful approaches can then be expanded. In other words, governance becomes a process of learning.
This may be one of the most important lessons for Pakistan.
We often treat policies as political announcements rather than as experiments that need continuous evaluation. A government launches a programme, a new policy is announced, or a five-year plan is prepared—and then political circumstances change. The next government arrives with a different set of priorities, sometimes abandoning what came before. The result is that Pakistan repeatedly starts from the beginning.
China’s experience suggests a different approach: governments may change, but the state should continue learning.
This does not mean that Pakistan needs China’s political system. It means that we need to think differently about the functioning of the state.
The first lesson could be long term planning.
Countries cannot transform their economies, education systems, energy sectors or human capital in five years. Yet in Pakistan, our political and administrative thinking is frequently tied to short-term political cycles. Governments understandably want projects that can produce visible results before the next election. But national development requires continuity.
China has pursued long-term strategies and then translated them into successive stages of implementation. Whatever one’s political opinion about China’s system, there is a practical lesson here: national priorities should not be rewritten every time a government changes.
Pakistan needs broad national agreements on issues such as education, human capital, taxation, energy, industrial development, exports and infrastructure. A new government should be able to modify these policies, but it should not be able to casually discard the country’s long-term direction.
The second lesson concerns the quality of the bureaucracy.
No country can be effectively governed without capable people inside the state. China’s emphasis on cadre development, training and performance evaluation provides an important point for reflection.
Pakistan has many talented civil servants, but our system often remains overly generalist. The challenges facing a modern state are increasingly technical. Artificial intelligence, climate change, energy security, digital governance, taxation, international trade and infrastructure require specialized knowledge.
Why should a government dealing with artificial intelligence, for example, depend entirely on officials whose primary expertise is general administration?
Pakistan needs to develop specialized state capacity. Civil servants should have opportunities for continuous professional education and specialization. Recruitment and promotion should reward competence, performance and problem-solving ability rather than simply seniority or connections.
This leads to a third lesson: performance must matter.
A policy is not successful because it is announced. It is successful when it produces results.
China’s governance experience places considerable emphasis on performance and measurable outcomes. Pakistan could benefit from adopting a similar mindset. Every major government programme should have clearly defined targets: What is supposed to be achieved? By when? Who is responsible? How will success be measured?
This sounds obvious, but much of governance in Pakistan remains input-oriented. We discuss how much money was allocated, how many meetings were held and how many projects were approved. We should ask a simpler question: what actually changed for ordinary citizens?
Did schools improve? Did electricity become more reliable? Did businesses find it easier to operate? Did employment increase? Did exports grow? Did public hospitals provide better services?
This brings us to another important Chinese lesson: legitimacy through delivery.
China’s political system derives legitimacy through mechanisms very different from Pakistan’s electoral system. Pakistan is constitutionally a parliamentary democracy, and elections remain central to political legitimacy. There is no need to dispute that.
But elections alone cannot sustain public confidence indefinitely. Citizens also judge governments by what they experience in their daily lives.
A citizen who receives reliable electricity, good education, safe roads, efficient public transport and accessible government services is more likely to develop confidence in the state. Conversely, when citizens encounter dysfunctional public services, corruption and administrative delays, formal political legitimacy can become increasingly fragile.
The lesson, therefore, is not to replace electoral legitimacy with performance legitimacy. It is to complement political legitimacy with effective governance.
Another area where Pakistan can learn is differentiated governance.
Pakistan is not a uniform country. Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have different economic structures, geographical conditions, social realities and administrative challenges. Yet our governance structures frequently apply broadly uniform approaches to very different problems.
China has experimented with differentiated approaches to governance and development according to regional and sectoral conditions. The principle is simple: different problems may require different solutions.
Pakistan could apply this principle without compromising national unity. Policies for agricultural Punjab cannot simply be replicated in Balochistan. Urban governance in Karachi requires different tools from those needed in remote districts. Digital governance, energy policy and industrial development likewise require specialized approaches.
But differentiated governance requires another ingredient: coordination.
One of Pakistan’s recurring weaknesses is that ministries, departments and governments often work in silos. One institution may formulate a policy while another controls the resources, and a third is responsible for implementation. Federal and provincial priorities may also diverge.
China’s experience demonstrates the importance of coordinating long-term objectives across institutions and levels of government. Pakistan needs stronger mechanisms through which national priorities are translated into coordinated action.
Finally, there is the issue of anticipating crises rather than merely responding to them.
Chinese governance thinking has increasingly placed emphasis on risk management and preparedness—not only for unexpected shocks, or the so-called “Black Swans,” but also for foreseeable threats that are repeatedly ignored, known as “Grey Rhinos.” Good governance is not simply about managing crises after they occur; it is about anticipating risks and developing the institutional capacity to deal with them before they become disasters.
Pakistan has too often been forced into reactive crisis management: responding to floods after they occur, addressing energy shortages only after they become acute, confronting economic crises after foreign exchange reserves have fallen, and intensifying security responses only after threats have already escalated.
The lesson is straightforward: the state must learn to anticipate problems rather than merely react to them. A capable state must develop the institutional capacity to ask beforehand: What could go wrong, and what can we do about it now?
But learning does not require imitation.
The real lesson from China is perhaps much simpler: a successful state is one that can learn, plan for the long term, develop competent people, coordinate its institutions, measure its performance and adapt when policies do not work.
Dr Shaharyar Khan
*The writer is Islamabad-based policy analyst. Prof Sheharyar Khan, is an academic and policy analyst. He has PhD in IR. Currently working as Head of Social Sciences Department at Iqra University Islamabad.
