Comment: China’s foreign policy towards Pakistan in the present context. (1999, 20 Marks)
China calls Pakistan its “all-weather” strategic partner. Its logic is the one Kautilya gave in the mandala theory, that the state beyond one’s neighbour is a natural ally; in modern terms it is balancing, which Stephen M. Walt’s balance-of-threat theory (The Origins of Alliances, 1987) explains better than ideology. John W. Garver (Protracted Contest, 2001) reads the entente as a means of keeping India preoccupied in South Asia, and Andrew Small (The China-Pakistan Axis, 2015) shows it is a security relationship first and an economic one only recently.
Drivers of Chinese policy
- Containing India’s rise: a Pakistan able to tie down Indian forces keeps India a South Asian power rather than an Asian rival. The boundary agreement of 2 March 1963, which placed the Shaksgam Valley under Chinese control, opened the partnership.
- Strategic access: the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), launched in 2015 as the Belt and Road’s flagship, runs from Kashgar to Gwadar and offers a partial route around the “Malacca dilemma”. It crosses Gilgit-Baltistan, which India claims.
- Arms and nuclear assistance: China helped build Pakistan’s nuclear and missile capability and supplied the Chashma reactors. SIPRI’s March 2026 data show China supplied 80% of Pakistan’s major arms imports in 2021–25, while Pakistan took 61% of China’s arms exports.
- Diplomatic cover and Xinjiang: China used holds in the UN Security Council’s 1267 Committee to delay listings of Pakistan-based terrorists (Masood Azhar until May 2019), raised Kashmir in the Council after 2019 and expects Islamabad to deny shelter to Uyghur militants.
The present context, then and now
- In 1999 it meant the aftermath of the May 1998 tests, which the June 1998 Clinton–Jiang statement on South Asia condemned, and Kargil, during which Beijing advised Nawaz Sharif to withdraw.
- Operation Sindoor (May 2025) turned the axis into battlefield evidence. Pakistan flew Chinese J-10C fighters, and India’s Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Rahul R. Singh, said on 4 July 2025 that Pakistan received “live inputs” from China, which used the conflict as a “live lab” for its weapons.
- Regional manager: China convenes trilateral meetings with Pakistan and Afghanistan, and its Urumqi mediation between them in April 2026 produced nothing.
- Limits of the patron: CPEC has slowed under debt, power-sector arrears and attacks on Chinese nationals, such as the Besham bombing of March 2024. Pakistan hedges too: its army chief Asim Munir courted Washington, Islamabad mediated the April 2026 US–Iran ceasefire, and its Saudi defence pact (September 2025) was extended to Türkiye at Mecca in August 2026.
- Calibrated support: China issued an ultimatum in 1965 but never intervened, stayed out in 1971, and in May 2025 publicly urged restraint. It backs Pakistan up to the threshold of war, never across it.
Implications for India
The axis makes the two-front problem concrete. India’s response combines internal balancing (border infrastructure, Rafale and S-400 acquisitions), external balancing through the Quad and the United States, and contestation of CPEC: the MEA’s May 2017 statement refused any project ignoring India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The managed thaw with Beijing, from the October 2024 patrolling arrangement to Xi Jinping’s September 2026 visit for the New Delhi BRICS summit, has not loosened Chinese support for Pakistan.
Conclusion
China’s Pakistan policy is instrumental, not sentimental: Pakistan is a lever against India, an outlet to the Arabian Sea and an arms client. Beijing will arm, shield and finance it, but calibrates support to avoid war with India and protect its commercial stakes. For India the axis is a structural fact to be managed by raising its costs, not a tie that diplomacy can break.