Strategic relations between Pakistan and China and its implications on India
Peiris (2010) have noted, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s five-day visit to China, starting July 6, sought to strengthen economic and strategic relations between two countries. Zardari met Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao and a number of other important political and business leaders. This is Zardari’s fifth visit to China, including two official visits since he was elected as the country’s president in 2008. Besieged by deep economic and political crisis and continued tensions with India, Islamabad considers China as an important ally. In context of growing international power rivalry, including with India, Beijing is seeking to consolidate its relations with Islamabad. Several investment and trade agreements beneficial to Pakistan were signed during Zardari’s visit. However, there was no mention whether Zardari and Chinese leaders discussed plans for China to build two new nuclear reactors in energy-hungry Pakistan. This initiative has drawn concern among major powers, particularly the US and India. According to Pakistan’s ambassador to China, Masood Khan, approximately 120 Chinese enterprises work in Pakistan. China has invested in Pakistani telecommunications, energy, infrastructure, heavy engineering, IT, mining, and defence industries. New agreements signed include building hydroelectric dams, transfer of hybrid seed technology, expanding banking operations, roads and communication networks, and cooperation in agriculture focusing on optimum utilization of irrigation water and development of new high yielding varieties of wheat and cotton. China also promised to provide 50 million Yuan as a grant to Pakistan for new projects. China is also funding the construction of Gwadar Port in Balochistan province. This is part of a strategic initiative to build naval positions dubbed the “string of pearls” by US analysts—a series of port installations on Indian Ocean sea lanes from Hong Kong to the Port of Sudan. As well as in Pakistan, Beijing is helping finance construction of port facilities in Myanmar (Burma), Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. For Pakistan, cooperation with China, its historic ally in the region, holds out the prospect of major economic benefits. The China National Energy Administration aims to work with Pakistani authorities to develop Pakistan’s energy supply. Pakistan’s severe economic crisis has been intensified by its massive electricity power shortage of 4,000-5,000 MW over its capacity of 16,500 MW. This has crippled the industrial sector, which is incapable of providing sufficient electricity for production, notably in the textile industry. Pakistan is under the influence of a dangerous cocktail. It at once faces a growing insurgency led by Taliban and al Qaeda militants, a domestic political system characterized by interminable infighting, and an economic meltdown. Inside the U.S. government, preventing against a Pakistani collapse has become the clarion call for inter-agency coordination. The antidote, however, is unclear. Pakistani officials have long considered the United States a fickle and unreliable partner. For the last sixty years U.S. policy toward Pakistan has oscillated wildly between two extremes: entrancement with Islamabad and an unquestioning embrace of its policies, or chastisement of the country for provoking wars or developing nuclear weapons. Today, Pakistani discontent with Washington stands at a record high. According to recent polls, only 16% of Pakistanis have a favorable view of the U.S., while 68% look upon the United States unfavorably.1 From 2000 to 2008, America’s unfavorable ratings in Pakistan consistently exceeded 50%. Pakistanis believe the United States treats them as a disposable ally, convenient friend when fighting communism or al Qaeda, but one just as easily thrown away when core American interests are no longer at stake. Pakistan sits at the nexus of many of its most pressing concerns. Beijing has invested billions of dollars in highways, naval ports and energy conduits within Pakistan, all of which serve China’s strategic or economic security needs. In the wake of Uighur Chinese discontent in the Xinjiang province, concern in Beijing that militant Islamic ideology in Pakistan might actuate further domestic rioting in the mainland has intensified. And finally, while China’s border disputes with India remain unresolved, the two giant neighbors have established a mature framework for discussion that supplements a more robust interaction characterized by rapidly increasing trade and people-to-people exchanges. This rapprochement is indicative of China’s broadening agenda in South and Central Asia. The focus on the parallel development of the political, economic and security relationships between China and Pakistan, and the United States and Pakistan. It reviews the origins of those relationships and explains why Beijing, Islamabad and Washington have proved unable to cooperate in the past to achieve measurable security gains. It then analyzes the deteriorating situation in Pakistan today and highlights both the American and the Chinese interest in sustaining a stable Pakistan. This assessment is followed by recommendations on how the three countries can come together to achieve short-term security goals in Pakistan. Any Indian expectation that as part of the assurance of Prime Minister Wen of caring for India’s core interests and major concerns, China would reverse its policy of helping Pakistan in the development of its railway and road infrastructure in the Gilgit-Baltistan area bordering Xinjiang, which de jure is part of India’s Jammu and Kashmir, and developing the hydro-electric potential in the Gilgit-Baltistan area was belied when the two countries announced the formal signing of more agreements relating to Gilgit-Baltistan during Mr.Zardari’s stay in Beijing. Reference Peiris V (2010) Zardari’s visit strengthens Pakistan-China relations, 22 July 2010
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