Small - The China-Pakistan axis: Asias new geopolitics

ANDREW SMALL

Asias New Geopolitics

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Copyright Andrew Small, 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title Small, Andrew
The China-Pakistan Axis
Asias New Geopolitics
ISBN 978-0-19-021075-5
eISBN 978-0-19-025757-6

The Pakistanis love China for what it can do for them, while the Chinese love Pakistanis despite what they do to themselves.

In the early hours of Sunday, June 24 2007, vigilante groups from Lal Masjid, the Red Mosque, raided a Chinese massage parlour and acupuncture clinic in sector F-8, one of Islamabads wealthiest neighbourhoods.

For the Lal Masjid radicals it was a serious tactical error. The same band of militants had been involved in a similar episode a few months earlier, when they rounded off their assault on another brothel by kidnapping four policemen. But the involvement of Chinese citizens made the June 24 incident far graver a matter. The treatment of Chinas overseas nationals had become a subject of acute sensitivity for Beijing. In the eyes of the more assertive sections of the Chinese public it was a test

The kidnappings set in motion a fateful chain of events that resulted, within weeks, in a bloody denouement at the mosque, and the irrevocable altering of the relationship between Pakistans military and its militants. And while the showdown between the army and the extremist bastion in the nations capital had been looming for some time, few would have anticipated the country that provided the final trigger for the confrontation. Not the United States, whose efforts to push Islamabad to crack down on domestic militancy were so often outmanoeuvred, but Pakistans all-weather friend whose requests could not be ignored: China.

For all the challenges that Pakistan faced, early in 2007 things seemed to be looking up. Annual growth ran at nearly 7 per cent. His efforts to position Pakistan as a crucial ally in the war against global terrorism continued to bear fruit, not least in the flow of billions of dollars of military aid and vital arms transfers.

China had its own part to play in this upbeat picture. The new port at Gwadarwhich Chinese companies had built and mostly paid forhad just been inaugurated, promising the next Dubai on the Makran Coupled with plans to expand the Karakoram Highway, which spans the high mountain passes in North-East Pakistan and North-West China, and a host of new telecommunications and mining investments, there was now hope that Pakistans prospects might be tied to Chinas extraordinary economic expansion. Beijing was even there to cushion the blow of the US-India civil nuclear agreement, announced in 2005. Not only was there a prospect of China giving Pakistan a matching dealthe expansion of the Chashma nuclear power plantsbut the US-India move seemed to mark the end of any temptation for Beijing to take a more balanced approach in its relations with its two South Asian neighbours. Residual Pakistani anxieties about China being lured away by Indias economic boom were instead superseded by the prospect of consolidating a new axis with the emerging superpower.