For the third time this year, our government has gone running to another country to ask for investment. In May, we had headlines announcing that the UAE had agreed to invest $10 billion in Pakistan, during a visit by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Then this June, Sharif led a large delegation of Pakistani businessmen (and yes, they were all men so no need for gender-neutral language here) to China in the hopes of inking an equally large number of business deals. All they came back with, sadly, was a handful of MoUs. The only real action happening on that China visit was the groundwork laid down for renegotiating the terms of the Chinese power projects entered into during CPEC’s heyday. The finance minister made a subsequent visit the next month, to begin the process of that renegotiation, and came back with little more than a clearer idea of all that will be required to get that ball rolling.