In mid-1960s, Pakistan, a member of Western alliances in Middle East and Southeast Asia, defied considerable American pressure to seek a strategic relationship with China. In the three decades since then, China has emerged as a world power and some of the factors that created that earlier entente have undergone material change. And yet, after a brief period of apprehensions that there may be a downturn in bilateral ties, the top leaders of Pakistan and China are busy investing them with new strategic salience.
The process of upgrading and reorienting relations that have by and large stood the test of time was highlighted during the recent exchange of high level visits between the two countries. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was in Pakistan in April 2005. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf visited Beijing in February 2006 while President Hu Jintao of China was in Islamabad in November 2006. The extended visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to China in April this year is part of the same endeavor to re-define and deepen relations. In 2005, China was instrumental in Pakistan getting the status of an observer at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and more recently, Pakistan played a key role in China attaining a similar status with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
Pakistan’s realignment with the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was often seen as a tipping point where other linkages might get relegated to a secondary order.
China’s burgeoning trade with India and its increasing awareness of a global role were similarly cited as reasons for a diminished interest in Pakistan. Neither of these scenarios came to pass. Instead, a new profile of a bilateral alliance has emerged and at its heart lies the promise of Pakistan as a conduit of energy and strategic commodities for China by virtue of its geographical location. A potentially dramatic factor in the emerging scene is the new Pakistani deep-sea port of Gwadar in which the Chinese invested $200 million.
The promise is not without some peril. In fact, some observers are already talking about a new Great Game centered on this port. It is not difficult to prophesy that the next two decades would witness considerable turbulence as the United States comes to terms only reluctantly with pressures for a multipolar world. Cooperation, competition and even conflict are likely to delineate this tangled process in which the control of energy resources will be a major determinant. In promoting itself as an energy corridor to China in particular and South and East Asia in general, Pakistan may be claiming a degree of sovereign decision-making that in the judgment of many analysts can become a potential irritant in Pakistan-US relations. Washington is not indifferent to Pakistan’s looming energy crisis or, for that matter, its economic growth. But it favors solutions that remain subordinate to its global agenda. It opposes the eminently feasible Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that offers the additional advantage of giving India and Pakistan a joint stake in regional peace. It is, however, willing to help promote a gas pipeline to South Asia from Turkmenistan and a hydroelectric power grid from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan, projects which are today vulnerable to instability in Afghanistan and even Turkmenistan’s ability to supply gas in quantity after its recent agreements with the Russian Federation.
President Musharraf’s wholehearted commitment to the US-led war on terror and his frequent claims that the alliance he has forged with Washington this time is for the long haul do not enjoy universal support in Pakistan. A sizable section of informed opinion has little faith in the reliability of relations with Washington beyond the exigency of the present conflict in Afghanistan that depends heavily on assistance from Pakistan. Already, the strong differentiation made by the United States between Pakistan and India on the question of sophisticated American participation in peaceful nuclear energy programs has become an argument for enhancing relations with Beijing. China is the only country in the world that has helped Pakistan set up a nuclear power reactor and may be open to Pakistani requests for more reactors. It is also seen as the friend that has made a visible contribution to Pakistan’s capacity building in several civil and defense-related sectors. More than twenty agreements in public and private sectors have been signed during Shaukat Aziz’s latest visit to China. There was a clear security symbolism in many of his engagements outside Beijing.
There are formidable problems in creating an all-weather corridor from Gwadar to Xinjiang through Pakistan’s majestic mountain ranges but, if successful, the project will hugely reduce the distance and expense, making China a very serious player in a region that the United States traditionally dominates. Pakistan is the geopolitical hub for bringing China, the Gulf including Iran and Africa into a thriving economic interaction. Shaukat Aziz’s current visit to China shows that his hosts are willing to make the enterprise worthwhile for Pakistan by further diversifying cooperation. China is ready to make a large investment in Pakistan’s chronically weak manufacturing sector. It is also the only worthwhile partner of Pakistan in defense technology and production.
The great fluctuations in Pakistan-US relations ranging from close collaboration in the Cold War to harsh American sanctions from time to time — sanctions that hurt Pakistan deeply — have in the past been largely caused by unilateral American perceptions of the need for maintaining an alliance with Pakistan. Against this checkered backdrop, Pakistani diplomacy faces the challenge of persuading the United States that Pakistan needs to supplement an enduring alliance with it with a robust regional role in cooperation with China and perhaps in the years ahead also with India.
— Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassador of Pakistan.
