Why China has found a friend and ally in Pakistan

As one Chinese Communist Party academic puts it, Beijing’s “biggest fear is India becoming a Japan or South Korea”. China was facing a “Pakistan dilemma” as it weighed its ambition to build a regional counterweight to India against its fears of an India-US alliance.That dilemma now appears to have been resolved unequivocally, likely because of a combination of factors. The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) certainly increased China’s stakes in Pakistan. Beijing’s continuing concerns in Xinjiang, too, led to an ever greater dependence on Pakistan to clamp down on Uighur groups along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Beijing’s security agencies see Pakistan as key to ensuring stability not only in the western Xinjiang region, where Beijing is dealing with a jihadist threat, but also in Afghanistan. This explains why Beijing is often prepared to tolerate Pakistan’s fostering of anti-India terrorists. medium nocaption90102462Beijing’s rationale is that as long as Islamabad demonstrates willingness to crack down on groups that target China, such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement — which in China’s view it has done — it has no reason to complain about other Pakistani misdemeanours. In fact, it would go as far as enabling them, as its UNSC actions demonstrated.The prevailing view in Beijing is that Pakistan needs to be at the centre of China’s plans in dealing with the rising Islamist threat it is grappling with in its western Xinjiang region. Cooperation between both countries has worked well and satisfied Beijing, says South Asia scholar Han Hua of Peking University.So far, Beijing’s approach has been twofold: in the short term, it has leaned on Pakistan’s army and ISI to crack down on Uighur terror camps along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, and in the longer term, it hopes its investments in the CPEC will bring greater stability to Pakistan.In the days after Kabul fell in 2021, Yue Xiaoyong, China’s newly-appointed special envoy to Afghanistan, was asked if the return of the Taliban was a major victory for Pakistan, and hence, a positive development for China too. Yue replied as a diplomat would, carefully weighing his words, but didn’t deny this was the case. “As you know,” he said, “we have an all-weather strategic partnership between China and Pakistan, which provides a very good basis for communication, exchange of views and cooperation on the situation in Afghanistan. I believe that this cooperation will in turn strengthen this all-weather strategic partnership.”Reading between the lines of Yue’s careful answer, one can assess that in Beijing’s view, the new situation in Afghanistan could, in one sense, be mutually reinforcing for the already close China-Pakistan relationship. Yue, who was speaking from Islamabad, continued:“Indeed, Pakistan, as an important regional country and a neighbour of Afghanistan, has a very important role to play in resolving the Afghan issue. People here, both the government and the public, are very concerned about the changes and the crisis in Afghanistan and they are very interested in the situation in Afghanistan. They have really contributed a lot to the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan before and now, as well as to the negotiations within Afghanistan.”Hailing Pakistan’s “contribution” to the peace and reconciliation process was an extraordinary comment. It was, of course, an open secret to anyone in Kabul, New Delhi and Washington that Pakistan had, from the get-go, undermined the process through its open advocacy for the Taliban (the US, of course, was equally responsible, in the way it carried forward its talks with the Taliban).What Yue’s comments underlined was a growing Chinese reliance on Pakistan on the Afghan question. Beijing had, for better or for worse, cast its lot with Islamabad, viewing this approach as its best bet to secure its interests. “These contexts where China becomes quite reliant on Pakistan — they are not on the Chinese side hugely capable of analysing and making judgments on all the subtleties of what’s going on within the Taliban, in intra-Afghan politics, etc,” says Andrew Small, author of The China Pakistan Axis. He notes:Even if you look back at their involvement in the reconciliation process, China was not an actor that was able to play a very kind of direct mediating role. In terms of its involvement in the minutiae, this is not their comfort zone, and this is not an area that they have very much depth on. In a particularly fast-moving situation like this, they need the Pakistanis.They don’t altogether rely on them, they have their reservations. I don’t think their agendas are in perfect sync. But I think over the last decade particularly, they’ve figured out ways to be relatively joined up on this, a little bit more so than they were.The Chinese, Small says, “need the Pakistanis if they want to nudge the Taliban on all of the issues that they’re concerned about”. Beijing does have direct links and its own (largely economic) leverage, but the fact is, as Small notes, “Ultimately, the reason for this relationship [with the Taliban], and the reason that China is able to have a certain quality of relationship with the Taliban, is still, quite heavily, Pakistan.”Beijing has also appeared to come to the conclusion that India’s growing closeness to the US, and the return of the Quad (the US-India-Australia-Japan security grouping), suggested an inevitability of India drifting closer to the American orbit. In the view of some strategists, the border clashes between India and China in the summer of 2020, and the PLA’s extraordinary amassing of troops along the Line of Actual Control and disregarding the carefully built border agreements that had maintained a fragile peace for decades, were in part driven by a Chinese view that India was ‘strategically unreliable’ and needed to be given a message because it was being ‘emboldened’ by the US.As much as the PLA is driving hostile relations with India, it is a key force behind the growing closeness with Pakistan. Hu Shisheng, a leading Chinese strategic expert on India and Pakistan at the influential China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, says the CPEC has changed the China-Pakistan equation dramatically. medium nocaption90102485It is effectively pushing both countries in a direction where they “will become mutual stakeholders of each other”. “This means any disturbance in Pakistan,” he cautions, “will get Chinese interests disturbed.” It is hence unavoidable, in Hu’s opinion, that Pakistan will increasingly become ‘a bigger factor’ in India–China relations.Privately, many Chinese officials see the military as the most favourable interlocutor in Pakistan, including in pushing the CPEC, rather than a weak civilian government. One of the CPEC’s most important projects is the upgradation of infrastructure in PoK, starting with the Karakoram highway. In the event of a conflict between India and Pakistan, this link will allow China to rapidly transport materials and assistance, even if it is unlikely to involve its own troops directly. Officials believe it is only a matter of time before the PLA has boots on the ground in PoK, ostensibly to protect Chinese personnel. In 2016, China and Pakistan for the first time began joint patrols in areas bordering PoK and Xinjiang.Zhang Chunxiang, a former Chinese ambassador in Pakistan posted there shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks, reflects much of the thinking in Beijing when he bristles at the suggestion of differences between the two countries he calls ‘iron brothers’ on the terrorism issue. Zhang says Pakistan is “the only country we have a solid relationship with”. Zhang became visibly angry when asked about terror links between Uighur groups and Pakistani organisations and whether Pakistani agencies were doing enough to crack down on terror.“Has the US eradicated terrorism? Has India? It’s not possible. So why do you people only ask about Pakistan?” Zhang said. Echoing the Pakistani establishment’s repeated (and unfounded) accusations claiming Indian intelligence agencies were behind attacks on Chinese investments in Pakistan, Zhang alleged that an attack during his time as envoy at Gwadar port was carried out not by Pakistani terrorists but by a ‘foreign country’. Zhang wouldn’t name it, but added, with dramatic effect, it was “one everybody knows”.Excerpted with permission from The Comrades and the Mullahs: China, Afghanistan and the New Asian Geopolitics (published by Harper Collins India)