Leveraging social media for CPEC & OBOR | Wali Zahid

Skill City: Asian Answers… to Asian Questions skillcity.co
Leveraging social media for
the success of CPEC-OBOR
Wali Zahid, ceo Skill City, President IMC
China Study Centre | Islamabad | 14 November 2016

Who’s Wali Zahid?
▪ Asian businesses have known Wali for 25-plus-year work on business
leadership and executive coaching
▪ Wali leads the longest-running Train-The-Trainer workshop | 16th year | 16+
Asian locations | 1,000+ trainers trained

▪ MBA courses at IBA, ZABIST, CBM, UMT, IIU, Dow

▪ Disruptor, future-trends watcher, blogger, social media strategist
▪ Past: Team Leader, Prime Minister Quality Award, Pakistan | V2025

▪ Past: Member, BoG PSTD | advisory at LCWU, Indus Valley

▪ Past: Member, Board of Studies, CBM and advisory IBA

▪ Now: Member, BoG PIM (Pakistan Institute of Management)

Wali Zahid bio…1
▪ Wali Zahid is a Pakistani futurist, speaker, social media strategist and
blogger. His blog, walizahid.com, is the most authentic place on
everything Pakistan.

▪ Wali was one of the first bloggers to post about CPEC as a game
changer and THE first to publish an in-country post on OBOR.

▪ Known for his widely-read #Pakistan2050 forecast, Wali appears on
national TV, occasionally writes for The News and speaks about
CPEC and OBOR enthusiastically. He was part of the first nationwide
brainstorming on Vision 2025 at Planning Commission in 2013.

Wali Zahid bio…2
▪ Wali's early work life was as a journalist where he worked for Dawn, The Nation
and becoming Editor of The News, Lahore in 1991. He later worked briefly at BBC
London. Later, he established Institute of Media & Communications (IMC) in
Islamabad which offered training courses in print and TV journalism, advertising,
cartooning and PR.

▪ Wali has been a China watcher for 30 years and has seen China grow from ‘just
another’ country to become world's next superpower.

▪ Wali was an early adapter to online media, using email by 1994, first website in
1997, and early user of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. His Twitter followers
include US President Barack Obama, several Pakistani ministers and media
people. His FB page has over 140k fans and LinkedIn over 15k followers.

Wali
▪ Today

Pakistan of future
▪ Wali on
Pakistan of
future

▪ The News

▪ 14.8.2014

#Pakistan2050 | The News | 14.8.2016

That’s me on /mywali

author page

walizahid.com: Over half a million views

CPEC our top-viewed post: nearly 60k

Social is not just all talk
It’s BIG money

11.11
▪ Social media
is not just talk

▪ Singles’ Day

▪ alibaba.com

▪ RMB120B/
$18B sales

1
What do CPEC and OBOR mean to
Social users

CPEC & OBOR
▪ Since CPEC became a national issue - more than
a mere $46B economic project - there is some
awareness among masses, but very little actual
knowledge

▪ OBOR - very little information even at the elite level

▪ This after experience of speaking to 1,000’s people

OBOR developments missed on social
25 August 2016:
Chinese-built
Tajikistan
Railway, the first
railway project in
OBOR initiative,
started operation

8 September 2016:
First cargo train
from China arrives
in Afghanistan’s
Hairatan port in
northern Balkh
province

5 October:
Chinese-built
Ethiopia-
Djibouti
Railway is
launched
today

OBOR developments missed
6 November:
First Silk Road
trans-Eurasia
cargo train
from China
arrives in Riga,
Latvia

How China left US behind in GDP PPP
▪ China is now $2.7 trillion ahead of US

▪ China, US and India are three countries
whose economies matter (slides on
contribution to world GDP and FDI inflows)

FDI 3

2
Key challenges
Stakeholders

Failing of four stakeholders
1. Federal govt

2. Opposition

3. Provincial govts

4. ‘Other’ more powerful stakeholders

Failing of stakeholder: federal govt
Federal govt failed to (in spite of APCs, 1on1’s):

▪ Proactively engage other stakeholders

▪ Provide transparency

▪ Use social media

▪ Impose rule of law in general & cyber laws in
particular on CPEC rumour-mongering

Lost opportunity
1. No state or private media
accompanied PM Sharif to
BRICS/SCO summit in Ufa,
Russia, where significant
and far-reaching
developments were about
to happen

2. Ditto SCO meeting on 2-3
Nov in Bishkek

Gwadar Port
▪ Twitter trends on the
day PM Sharif
inaugurates it

▪ No mention of Sharif

Failing of stakeholder: Opposition
Opposition historic folly:

▪ Islamabad dharna

▪ Delaying President Xi’s visit

▪ Delaying CPEC initiation

▪ Delaying CPEC projects completion

Failing of stakeholder: Provincial govts
Failing by some provincial govts:

▪ Lack of being onboard from the start

▪ Provincialising a federal G2G project

Failing of stakeholder: ‘The Others’
Failing by some ‘the other’, more powerful
stakeholders:

▪ Limit federal govt hand in two provinces

▪ Use security threat to leverage more portion
of CPEC monies

▪ ‘Let’ CPEC become embroiled in controversy

3
Key challenges
Media

A bit of media overview
▪ Print

▪ Electronic

▪ Social

▪ Grapevine

Print - English
▪ National access to print is limited because of
people’s low purchasing power and low literacy

▪ English-language dailies have negligent readers but
important in agenda-setting

▪ Within English, very few access info regarding
economy and business topics. CPEC/OBOR
currently falls in economic category

Print - Urdu
▪ Urdu-language dailies have relatively wider
circulation but publish pop version of news -
mostly political news and politician-bashing

▪ CPEC/OBOR currently of not central interest
to these readers

Electronic
▪ Agenda-setting in prime-time electronic media
is a closely-kept play by ‘real powers’

▪ On private TV channels, mostly, it’s politician-
bashing, scandal-sniffing news & current
affairs anchors-led parallel courts + media trial

▪ Very few people watch official PTV in cities

Social - Twitter & FB
▪ Social is dominated by political narrative
against politicians

▪ Twitter sets the agenda

▪ Facebook follows the lead

▪ Younger population is not bothered about
both. They are on Instagram and Snapchat

Social - Whatsapp phenomenon
Here’s a particular phenomenon - Whatsapp. It is
used to:

▪ Form opinions

▪ Spread disinformation

▪ Reinforce disinformation

Print, TV, FB used to reinforce further disinformation

Grapevine
▪ The most lethal way on how disinformation
and rumours are spread

▪ Fodder for public consumption for all
demographics - from poor to elite

▪ Combines all media

Social - some numbers
▪ 27 million social media users in Pakistan

▪ Only 14% of population

▪ PTA: 34 million 3G/4G subscribers by end-Oct

▪ Snapshot next slide

The disinformation effect
▪ It shows on all media

▪ Let me pick examples from all media
regarding CPEC

TV
▪ KPK PA Speaker Asad Qaiser on national TV

▪ Clip: https://youtu.be/aPTUqg4e7mU

Print
▪ 3 false news refuted in one day by Zhao

▪ Express Tribune
▪ The Nation

Grapevine
Whatsapp & Photoshop used. 3 examples

1. Wali Zahid, Project Ignorance

2. Mansoor Ali Khan, Express News TV

3. NYT’s Salman Masood

Grapevine

Grapevine
▪ NYT’s Slaman Masood

Additional complexity
▪ China has a very large social media universe

▪ Source info is in Chinese (unlike American)

▪ China’s social media & news not SEO-
optimised (results don’t show from Xinhua,
SCMP, People’s Daily unless you search by
name)

China social
▪ WeChat

▪ Qzone

▪ Weibo

4
The way forward
Leveraging social media

What to do 1: get viral
▪ Use feature or animated videos with virality

▪ Create an CPEC/OBOR app

▪ Create a Whatsapp number anyone can subscribe
to

▪ Create interactive websites in Chinese/English/Urdu

▪ Develop infographics/maps/quizzes in 3 languages

What to do 2: achieve scale
▪ My CPEC post reached nearly 60,000 views.
But in a 27M social universe, it’s nothing

▪ Everything that you do around CPEC & OBOR
needs to achieve a scale

What to do 3: involve KOLs, P2P contacts
▪ Involve researchers, youth leaders, campus
ambassadors, business leaders, professional bodies,
entrepreneurs societies

▪ Develop a material supply line for bloggers

▪ Arrange blogger meet-ups

▪ Transition from economic to culture dimension

▪ Create CPEC/OBOR merchandise

Final point
▪ The only way to deal with disinformation is
either preempt it (proactively), or counter it
real fast (reactively). Don’t let it snowball.

Thank you
Wali Zahid
skillcity@live.com
skillcity.co
walizahid.com
fb.com/mywali
twitter.com/walizahid
youtube.com/c/walizahid

Follow me on /mywali

Leveraging social media for CPEC & OBOR | Wali Zahid

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