Pakistan, Aug. 20 -- Former Federal Board of Revenue chairman Shabbar Zaidi has recently offered a particularly harsh assessment of Pakistan's economic relationship with China. His criticism of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Chinese investment and Pakistan's dependence on Chinese trade raises questions that deserve serious discussion. But the suggestion that Pakistan could somehow improve its economy by disengaging from China also exposes a larger problem in our economic debate: our tendency to look outside Pakistan for explanations that are, to a considerable extent, found within Pakistan itself.

There is no reason to place CPEC beyond scrutiny. Power tariffs, capacity payments, financing terms, project selection, imported...