Zafar Uddin Mahmood: Understanding China is important and relevant

Footprints

Zafar Uddin Mahmood, former Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and President of the Pakistan-based initiative Understanding China Forum, first came to China in the 1970s and spent decades here as a diplomat. Having personally witnessed China’s reform and opening-up from the late 1970s onward, he offers his perspective on why understanding China matters not only to Pakistan but also to the wider world.