China-Pakistan Relations: Why it matters for Pakistan Plus

Prologue

This article is part of a series Quwa will publish under Quwa Premium through 2018. For this week, we are broadly overviewing the key aspects of Pakistan’s relations with China, which – in some respects, such as defence procurement – are its most important. However, in the coming year subsequent articles will seek to examine, in-depth, China-Pakistani relations in terms of trade, industry and economy, foreign relations, third-party states (e.g. Russia and the United States) and other aspects. Whatever one’s views might be of China or Pakistan, it is evident that the two require each other to fulfill their respective interests, be it national security, economic or geo-strategic. China appears to have developed its approach to interacting with Pakistan, having committed to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. However, have Pakistan’s foreign policymakers developed a concrete and fully articulated strategy towards Beijing?

Introduction

Since the 1960s, China grew in prominence as one of Pakistan’s leading suppliers of big-ticket armaments, especially as an alternate supplier to the U.S. and Western Europe. This relationship solidified itself in the 1990s when Pakistan was struck by the Pressler Amendment, which had effectively blocked the sale and transfer of U.S.-built weapons to Pakistan in response to Pakistan’s push for nuclear weapons.

The marquee programs to have emerged in this decade include the al-Khalid main battle tank (MBT) and the JF-17 Thunder multi-role fighter. With Pakistan finding it difficult to access and/or afford top-of-the-line Western equipment since 2000, Beijing has only solidified its position as a big-ticket arms supplier to Islamabad. In 2015, the Pakistan Navy pivoted to China away from Western Europe by selecting an air-independent propulsion (AIP) submarine from the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC), while the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has – building upon the JF-17 – tapped into the Chinese aerospace base for support in Project Azm, which is slated to provide a fifth-generation fighter (FGF) for the PAF.

However, in 2015, Beijing executed a significant step in its relations with Pakistan – CPEC. With CPEC, the Chinese broke-out of their status as simply Pakistan’s leading arms supplier to being described as an ‘all-weather ally’, ‘strategic partner’, ‘backer’ and many other loaded terms by politicians, observers, analysts, journalists, academics and pundits within and outside of Pakistan. The credibility of these claims and, above all, fully understanding CPEC will require many separate inquiries. However, CPEC has certainly changed the nature of China’s ties with Pakistan – but how well has Pakistan adapted?

Determining the Foundation

Quwa will use this question as its guide when it explores the various aspects of Pakistan’s ties with China in 2018. However, for this week the emphasis is on building a primer and understanding ‘why’ this bilateral relationship matters for both countries and their respective geo-political regions. One might be tempted to start with Pakistan’s decision to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the legitimate body governing the territorial domain of China in 1951. It is a valid starting-point, but one must accept that the inherent size of mainland China, its population (thus, its market and scale) and the CPC’s competency (especially from the 1980s) in the area of economic management will have enabled the PRC to establish its strong position on the international relations stage anyways.