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| Author: | Esther Pan |
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March 8, 2006
As the United States and India celebrate an increasingly warmer relationship, attention has focused on the reaction of Pakistan. Many experts predict the new closeness between the world's only superpower and Islamabad's fiercest rival will prompt Pakistan to develop even closer ties with its longtime strategic security partner, China.
"Traditionally, the driving factor for China was a hedge against India, and for Pakistan it was gaining access to civilian and military resources," says Kenneth Lieberthal, a noted China expert and professor at the University of Michigan. Pakistan was one of the first countries to recognize the People's Republic of China, in 1950. In the 1960s, Pakistan and China grew closer as China's relationship with India worsened, leading to a border war in 1962 in which Chinese forces easily defeated the Indian army. Islamabad and Beijing have had close relations since, with Beijing providing economic, military, and technical assistance to its western neighbor.
Each country helps the other to check India's power. India's dispute with Pakistan ties up its troops and attention—a boon for China, which still has an unresolved dispute over a long stretch of its border with India. Pakistan, in turn, gets access to military hardware and a powerful strategic partner. "For China, Pakistan is a low-cost secondary deterrent to India," says Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar and South Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "For Pakistan, China is a high-value guarantor of security against India." While the relationship is not exactly balanced, it has been critically important to Pakistan, which has built its foreign policy around China. "Pakistan needs China more than China needs Pakistan," says Jing Huang, senior fellow in Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution. Subhash Kapila of the South Asia Analysis Group adds that "the cornerstone of Pakistan's strategic policies for the last forty years has been its undying military relationship with China."
For China, Pakistan provides a bridge between Beijing and the Muslim world, a geographically convenient trading partner, and a channel into security and political relations in South Asia. "China is trying to build up its global sphere of influence, and Pakistan doesn't mind China being a global power if it helps Pakistan become a regional power," says Haqqani.
The animosity between the two countries dates to partition in August 1947, when the British divided their former colony into two states. India was meant to be a secular democracy and Pakistan, a homeland for South Asian Muslims. More than six million Muslims migrated to Pakistan, and more than four million Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Tremendous violence and upheaval during the partition process left more than one million people dead.
In the half-century since, Pakistan and India have fought three wars and come close a few other times. The unresolved issue of the disputed territory of Kashmir and periodic military buildups on both sides have kept tensions high. Many Pakistanis still worry that India wants to reunite the territory under its control. Both countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
"Pakistan is a major recipient of Chinese economic aid," Huang says, including "massive" cooperation in the defense industry. China provides Pakistan with the following defense aid:
China is a major trading partner with Pakistan, accounting for nearly 11 percent of Islamabad's imports in 2004. Trade between the two countries was worth $4.25 billion in 2005, a 40 percent increase from the year before. On his recent trip to China, Musharraf encouraged Chinese business leaders to invest in Pakistan, saying, "Pakistan would welcome investments from China more than anywhere else because Chinese are our brothers and time-tested friends." The two countries have cooperated on a variety of large-scale infrastructure projects in Pakistan, including highways, gold and copper mines, major electricity complexes and power plants, and numerous nuclear power projects.
One of the most significant ongoing projects between the two nations is the construction of major port complex at the naval base of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. The complex, which is partially completed, will provide a port, warehouses, and industrial facilities for more than twenty countries. The port will eventually be able to receive oil tankers with a capacity of 200,000 tons, as well as link Afghanistan and Central Asia to the sea. The area will be declared a free-trade zone to try to build it into the commercial hub of the region. In return for providing most of the labor and capital for the project, China will gain strategic access to the Persian Gulf and a naval outpost on the Indian Ocean from which to protect its oil imports from the Middle East.
China, despite its long alliance with Pakistan, is increasingly reaching out to other nations. "What used to be a simple, stark, China-Pakistan alliance has become a much more complex, fluid relationship involving the United States and India," Lieberthal says. (The relationship between India, China, and the United States is explored in more depth in this CFR Background Q&A.) Pakistan helps China on a range of issues, including "providing intelligence, fighting terrorism, and repairing relations with the Muslim world," Huang says. "Beijing is trying to build up a wider global sphere of influence."
Some experts say China is using its status as a regional power with strong ties to Pakistan and a growing relationship with India to try to calm tensions and broker a solution to the Kashmir crisis that will guarantee regional security. China is intensely worried about war between India and Pakistan, experts say, so since the late 1990s it has been working quietly to bring the two sides together.
China has reached out to India, signing major agreements on energy, high-tech exchange, and trade. "China's game is to try to reduce negative factors in its relationship with India," Huang says. In a bid to reassure India and make it feel less threatened, China has made strong efforts to settle a border dispute with New Delhi in the Himalayas and soothe the wounded Indian national pride still left over from the 1962 war. And China has managed to improve its relationship with India without offending Pakistan. "Ironically, the most important chip in China's relationship with India is Pakistan," Huang says. "China is very quietly and effectively trying to help the two countries improve their relations."
Islamabad does not see positive relations with both Beijing and Washington as contradictory. "Pakistan thinks that both China and the U.S. are crucial for it," Haqqani says. "If push comes to shove, it would probably choose China—but for this moment, it doesn't look like there has to be a choice." Pakistan considers China a more reliable ally than the United States. Experts say Pakistanis are still stung by what they see as U.S. indifference toward their country after using it to funnel aid to Afghan mujahadeen fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. After the Russians pulled out in 1989, many Pakistanis feel the United States turned its back on Pakistan.
Experts say all the countries in the region are reevaluating their traditional positions. "Everyone in the region has learned to [develop] a relatively non-ideological set of policies," Lieberthal says. Others warn Pakistan can't take its importance to the United States for granted. Some say U.S. leaders are moving away from their staunch post-9/11 support for Musharraf, and could back truly democratic elections in 2007. Analyst Kapila writes in a paper for the South Asia Analysis Group that "judging the statements made by President Bush during his visit to Pakistan, a change in United States' Pakistan policies may have already commenced."
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