Still catching up, this time a short piece for Nikkei Asian Review in the wake of the attack in Karachi by Balochi separatists which murdered the Confucius Institute director and some of his staff.
Raffaello Pantucci is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and author of “Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire” (Oxford University Press, April 2022).
While Beijing would never admit it, the rise of Shehbaz Sharif as Pakistan’s new prime minister is a welcome development.
Sharif’s early and positive comments toward China, the fact his new Finance Minister Miftah Ismail made meeting officials from the Chinese Embassy his first formal encounter and the appointment of Ahsan Iqbal as minister responsible for the managing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor were all clear signals that the new government wants a cooperative relationship with Beijing.
That chummy mood was shattered by a brutal suicide bombing on April 26 that was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army at Karachi University and which killed the director of the Confucius Institute, Beijing’s cultural promotion organization, as well as two Chinese staff and their Pakistani driver.
The suicide bombing was the latest in a series of attacks by separatists who are now targeting China because of Beijing’s heavy investment in Balochistan, which includes the much discussed Gwadar Port.
Balochi separatists have a history of targeting Chinese nationals in Pakistan, launching a number of dramatic attacks over the years that include targeting the Chinese consulate in Karachi, the Chinese-built Pearl Continental Hotel in Gwadar and the Karachi stock exchange.
In 2018, then-Balochi leader Aslam Baloch dispatched his eldest son as a suicide bomber to blow up a busload of Chinese engineers going to work in Balochistan. No one aside from the bomber was killed, but that attack kicked off a violent campaign that has now taken another dark twist.
The latest attack on the Confucius Institute, a soft but prominent target, crossed many red lines, the most conspicuous of which was the unprecedented use of a female suicide bomber. The fact she appears to have been a well-educated, middle-class woman who leaves behind two young children suggests how broad and attractive the Balochi narrative has now become.
Amid the scramble to better understand precisely who was behind the attack, there are hints that other militant groups may have played some sort of support role. And as is usually the case in this troubled region, many are looking for signs that outside powers might be manipulating the Balochi cause for their own ends.
The usual suspects for those conspiracy minded are India and the United States. Afghanistan used to be the third, but this is less likely given the Taliban government’s crackdowns on Balochi groups based in Afghanistan, groups the former Western-backed government seemed to tolerate, a major source of discord between Islamabad and Kabul.
The bigger point is that the Balochi separatist cause is continuing to gain traction inside Pakistan and is only getting worse, with militants getting more and more ambitious, and seemingly able to strike at will.
In January, a bomb was detonated at a crowded market in Lahore, killing three, and in February, a large detachment of militants took on two bases belonging to the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force charged with maintaining law and order in Balochistan.
At least 20 militants and nine Pakistani soldiers were killed in fighting that went on for many hours, although Balochi groups said the casualty rates were much higher, claiming that nearly 200 Pakistanis were killed, with only 16 of theirs dead.
By targeting the Confucius Institute, Balochi militants are sending a clear signal to the many thousands of Chinese who live and work in Pakistan.
Because not all Chinese living and working in the region are linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, many of them live beyond the security perimeter that has been put around official CPEC projects. These people are now all clearly targets too, vastly expanding the number of people Pakistani authorities need to worry about protecting.
It is not clear what Beijing’s answer to all this will be. One option would be to deploy a Chinese military detachment. More likely is that China will step up military and intelligence aid, as well as increase their discrete security presence on the ground. Chinese private security contractors will doubtless start to appear more frequently.
But this is only a stopgap answer. China is clearly unhappy, and while they might be willing to absolve the new government for responsibility for this latest attack, the underlying problem is that Pakistan seems unable to bring the separatists under control.
If we continue to see attacks like this on Chinese nationals, it will become increasingly difficult for Beijing to send its people to work in the country. More importantly, the repeated targeting of Chinese nationals undermines the myth that Chinese investment in Pakistan is seen as benign on the ground. A much wider and more dangerous narrative that Beijing has little desire to take hold.
The truth is that across this wider region, China is increasingly becoming the most consequential player on the ground. This attracts allies and enemies alike and is a role that has responsibilities, as much as Beijing might want to shy away from them.
Islamabad clearly needs to take a different tack in Balochistan. Locals feel persecuted and see little opportunity in modern Pakistan. Stories of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture are common. Nor do locals see much direct benefit from Chinese investment.
Greater transparency and engagement are needed. Otherwise, the conflict will continue to metastasize and create problems with one of Islamabad’s most important partners on the world stage.
Still catching up on myself after my extended delinquency, here posting something about Pakistan in the wake of Shabhaz Sharif’s rise to power in the South China Morning Post. Think it still holds water reasonably well now, though I am not sure I quite see China seeing a field of friends across its border any more. Suspect it is more complicated than that, but then it always is. This coming week and the SCO Summit and President Xi’s visit to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is going to be a really interesting attempt to connect with something. Be interesting to see how it plays out.
– Shehbaz Sharif’s rise to power in Pakistan puts China in an advantageous position as its western neighbours all have governments friendly to Beijing.
– This also means China has a stake in the many problems that emanate from this region, though, and will be forced to take a more active role.
Illustration: Stephen Case, South China Morning Post
The election of Shahbaz Sharif as prime minister of Pakistan by legislators completes a series of events which place China in a favourable place in its Eurasian neighbourhood. Beijing now has a leader in Islamabad with whom it has had a successful relationship in the past.
China is also increasingly presenting itself as the closest partner to the new Taliban government in Kabul, and in Central Asia it faces a region where Russia – the other major power – is distracted by a disastrous war of its own choosing in Ukraine. China’s march of influence westward is continuing, but Beijing has still made no clear decision about what it will do with this influence.
When Nawaz Sharif – Shahbaz Sharif’s brother – was prime minister, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was jokingly called the “China-Punjab Economic Corridor” because many of the largest, juiciest investments appeared to be going to Nawaz Sharif’s home province of Punjab. At the time, the chief minister of Punjab was Shahbaz Sharif.
The reality is that the economic corridor’s investment has been fairly spread out around Pakistan, though completion rates seem better in Punjab and Sindh. However, it is worth noting that Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous region, so perhaps the focus of Chinese investment there is hardly surprising.
The tilt towards Punjab also reflected the fact that Beijing liked Shahbaz Sharif and found him a competent leader to engage with. Pakistan has a challenging political and economic environment, and in Punjab China found someone who could deliver.
Now Sharif has ascended to power after the tumultuous reign of former cricket star Imran Khan. While Beijing has been careful to avoid expressing a preference for one leader over another, China likes having decisive and effective leaders in charge.
Khan was acceptable because he was seen as being the military’s man initially. He was also happy to be outspoken in his support for Beijing while China came under fire for what is happening in Xinjiang. But China has faced growing problems in Pakistan in the past few years as its interests and nationals are increasingly targeted by militants.
China has always been happy dealing with military men because of their ability to deliver on outcomes. Beijing was in many ways most content when former general Pervez Musharraf was in charge in Islamabad. A former commando, he tended to tackle problems headfirst and actively sought to make sure China was happy even when this caused him problems at home.
But Sharif is an excellent alternative from Beijing’s perspective. This completes a picture for Beijing where it is dealing with authorities across its western borders with whom it seems satisfied. In Kabul, Beijing has shown itself to be a powerful player in tightly embracing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan government.
In Central Asia, China has a series of leaders who are either willing to quietly engage to advance whatever goals it wants or are actively eager to cultivate a positive economic relationship. In Kazakhstan, it has a leader who studied and worked in China and speaks Mandarin. This is a highly advantageous environment for Beijing.
However, Central Asia is also a highly troubled region, as we have seen in the past 12 months with the collapse of the Republic of Afghanistan and the chaos in Kazakhstan at the beginning of the year. Also, non-state groups in the region increasingly see China as an adversary they are eager to focus on.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor continues to be a narrative focus for Balochistan separatists in Pakistan, while Islamic State Khorasan has referred to China as an adversary in its literature and deployed a suicide bomber last October in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province. At a less violent level, nationalists in Kyrgyzstan have expressed anger towards China and attacked Chinese nationals, while public polling across Central Asia often places China in a negative light.
Beijing thus faces a major dilemma on a shortening horizon. It can no longer claim to have only passive influence across its Eurasian borders or face hostile authorities in power. It now has governments in power across the board that seem eager to actively please China. This also means China increasingly has a stake in the many problems that emanate from this region.
As the power closest to the governments in both Kabul and Islamabad, China now has little excuse for not trying to mediate the tense relations that continue to exist between the two capitals. As one of the largest investors in and increasingly the largest trading partner with both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, it will start to look odd if Beijing does not try to help the two smooth over their occasionally violent border relations.
Should further trouble erupt and Moscow is too preoccupied elsewhere to do something about it, Beijing will have to think about how it will manage the situation. Its currently passive approach might not always work out.
China is increasingly the most consequential actor in Eurasia, and it now has governments in power across the region who actively recognise that fact and are eager to please Beijing.
This both puts Beijing in a position of power but also one of great responsibility. It remains to be seen how China will rise to this challenge.
Raffaello Pantucci is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.
Finally on this past few week’s blast, a piece for Foreign Policy which was actually set up before events in Afghanistan came to a head, but had to get pushed back a bit. It is also my first piece with my excellent RSIS colleague Basit, with whom I have a few projects in the pipeline. Undoubtedly more on this topic and with Basit to come. Suspect the China and regional terrorism axis of topicality is only going to grow as we go further forwards.
As awareness of Uyghur persecution increases and anger about Beijing’s investment projects simmers, Chinese citizens and businesses are likely to suffer.
Pakistani rangers stand in front of the Chinese consulate after an attack in Karachi on November 23, 2018. – At least two policemen were killed when unidentified gunmen stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on November 23, officials said. (Photo by ASIF HASSAN / AFP) (Photo credit should read ASIF HASSAN/AFP via Getty Images)
With great power comes great responsibility, as the old Marvel comics maxim goes. But great power also attracts envy, anger, and enemies.
This is something that China is learning belatedly—and much to its chagrin—in Pakistan, where its investment projects are facing complications and its citizens and facilities are increasingly being targeted by local terrorist organizations, from jihadi groups like Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to ethnoseparatists in Balochistan and Sindh.
China has long been in the crosshairs of Pakistani militants. But lately the pace of attacks appears to be picking up. Last Friday saw the latest attempt, this time by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) against Chinese transports in Gwadar. The group has repeatedly targeted high-profile Chinese targets in Pakistan, including the Chinese Consulate in Karachi in November 2018.
Reports diverge regarding the casualties of this latest attack, with the BLA claiming it killed six Chinese nationals and three security guards, while Chinese and Pakistani authorities claim one Chinese national was injured and two children were killed (the BLA claims the two children were killed by scattershot firing from Pakistani forces). Whatever the grim count, the attack is the fourth high-profile incident this year, and it also confirms the worrying trend of using suicide bombers, an innovation for the Balochi group.
Pakistan has become a microcosm of a larger reality that Beijing is going to have to contend with globally. As it becomes a global power on the world stage, it is going to attract the anger of terrorist organizations. Beijing’s willingness to engage with the Taliban may be an attempt to try to preempt such problems in the new Afghanistan, but history has shown this to be a risky gamble for Beijing.
China tried to strike an earlier pre-9/11 deal with the Taliban to get them to do something about Uyghur groups the Chinese had noticed gathering in Afghanistan, but it is unclear that the Taliban did anything about those groups.
The new deal Beijing and the Taliban are reported to have struck is likely not dissimilar to the previous one in its concerns, but now there is the additional question of the large number of Chinese nationals who can be found around the region, including various intrepid entrepreneurs in Kabul who may not adhere to the various sharia laws the Taliban will impose. Who will guarantee their safety? And none of this will help Beijing overcome the larger problem of the inevitable enemies you attract once you have superpower status.
The Gwadar attack last Friday followed the killing of nine Chinese engineers working on the Dasu hydroelectric power project in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province—an attack that remains formally unclaimed. Soon after that attack, two Chinese nationals were shot at and one wounded in Karachi by a different Baloch separatist group (the Baloch Liberation Front). In March, a Sindhi separatist group wounded a Chinese national in a gun assault, also in Karachi. This followed two similar incidents in December.
Most dramatically, China’s ambassador to Pakistan, Nong Rong, narrowly escaped an attack by the TTP in April at the Serena Hotel in Quetta. Responsibility for this grim roster of incidents comes from a growing range of actors, highlighting the escalating nature of the problem that China is facing in Pakistan.
The most effective of these attacks was the assault in Dasu. Chinese sources have attributed it to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)—a group whose existence is disputed and whose name is mostly used to refer to a group that calls itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP)—acting in unison with the TTP. Both Pakistan and China also used the opportunity to cast blame on India—a perennial accusation thrown around terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
More formally, Beijing seemed to widen the circle of blame during the Afghan Taliban’s two-day visit to China, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi demanding that the Taliban make a clean break from ETIM/TIP and take action against it in Afghanistan as ‘it was a direct threat to China’s national security.’
While not stated explicitly, the statement appeared to be a shot across the bow, suggesting a condition for Beijing’s recognition of the Taliban government as the group takes power in Afghanistan. Beijing has continued to focus on ETIM as a preeminent concern that could attempt to take root, potentially emanating from the instability that is likely to follow the Taliban’s takeover, and it is not clear how confident Beijing is in Taliban assurances about managing ETIM threats.
But the abrupt increase in terrorist attacks on Chinese nationals and projects in Pakistan underscores how anti-Chinese militancy is evolving against the backdrop of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
China may be developing its relationship with the Taliban in part to mitigate these concerns, but the problem is much bigger than something Taliban leaders can control. Previously, the jihadi community was fairly ambivalent about China. Osama bin Laden was even quoted pre-9/11 saying that Beijing could be a strategic ally for the jihadi community given their collective antagonism toward the United States. But at the time, China was still seen as a developing country. Now it is the world’s second-largest economy and is increasingly becoming the most consequential actor in Afghanistan’s neighborhood. This changes the common perception of China and brings tension with it.
This tension is most clearly visible in Pakistan. Even though Beijing and Islamabad are close friends and strategic partners, Pakistan has consistently been the location of the highest number of terrorist attacks against Chinese nationals in any country.
This situation has the potential to get worse for Beijing. For the last two decades, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan kept the terrorist threat from that country in check, meaning China did not need to preoccupy itself too much with security challenges. With the U.S. exit, that security buffer is gone, as is the distraction of the great American Satan being present on Afghan soil.
China has sought to strengthen its direct defenses with Afghanistan through building bases and providing support to Tajik and Pakistani forces on either side of the Wakhan Corridor, alongside building its own direct bases in Tajikistan and bases for the former national Afghan government forces in Badakhshan (bases whose current status is unknown but presumably now under Taliban control).
This somewhat limited effort was being carried out when the United States was still there and providing definitive assurances to keep militant groups in check and even helping target anti-Chinese groups. In February 2018, the U.S. military targeted a series of camps in Badakhshan that were reportedly being used by the Taliban and ETIM.
The problem for China could get even worse. While the United States was at the receiving end of jihadi attacks for intervening in Afghanistan and for what was perceived as a broader anti-Muslim crusade as a result of the global war on terror, China is confronted with the ire of both the jihadi and the ethno-separatist groups in the region.
Sindhi and Baloch ethno-separatist groups perceive China as a neocolonial power usurping their resources and partnering with their primary adversary, the Pakistani state, to worsen their already abysmal socioeconomic condition. This was clearly articulated in the Baloch Liberation Front’s claim of responsibility for shooting at the Chinese nationals in Karachi: ‘In the garb of development projects, China is not only colluding with the Pakistani state in plundering the Baloch resources but assisting in the Baloch community’s persecution as well.’
Jihadi groups have been less focused in their anger toward China, continuing to see the United States and the West as their primary external adversaries. But at the same time, there is a palpable uptick in propaganda narratives directed toward China. This is often linked to Beijing’s persecution of the beleaguered Uyghur Muslim community in China’s Xinjiang region.
Rising ideologues like the mufti Abu Zar al-Burmi—originally from Myanmar—tie these narratives together. Since 2015, the firebrand orator Burmi has been framing China as the next neocolonial power after the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. Burmi, for instance, told his followers in a statement, ‘Mujahideen should know that the coming enemy of the ummah is China, which is developing its weapons day after day to fight the Muslims.’ In another video, titled ‘Let’s Disturb China,’ he argues that after the ‘Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan our next target will be China.’
His anti-Chinese rhetoric, combining narratives of Chinese colonialism (in his native Myanmar as well as Xinjiang) with accounts of Muslim persecution, has drawn jihadi attention to Beijing. Echoes of these sentiments are also found among some Indonesian jihadi groups and among ultranationalists in Central Asia.
Xinjiang has long been a discussion point for the global jihadi community, but the community has never dedicated resources toward doing anything about it. While it is still unclear that this has changed, what is noticeable is that the narrative is sharpening and the Uyghur cause is no longer the marginal issue that it used to be. Uyghur fighters are regularly praised by other jihadi factions for their bravery in battle.
For a country like Pakistan, which shares a direct border with Xinjiang, it has been a political hot potato, with Prime Minister Imran Khan regularly championing and defending China’s treatment of its Muslim minority. This has extended to not offering protections to the Uyghur community that is resident in Pakistan and has fallen into China’s suspicious crosshairs. This merely adds to the anger against the Pakistani state that is felt from within the jihadi community. Nevertheless, attacking China in Xinjiang or elsewhere in the mainland is a tall order for these groups.
By contrast, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—a network of highways, railways, power projects, and other projects that will enter Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region from Xinjiang and culminate at Gwadar port—presents these groups with numerous opportunities to hurt Beijing as well as the Pakistani government. Chinese investment in Pakistan has become a sort of soft underbelly for Beijing.
In its next planned phase, CPEC will spread further across Pakistan. And beyond formal CPEC projects, there is a growing number of potential Chinese targets in the country through the thousands of individual travelers and entrepreneurs who take advantage of the smooth visa access into Pakistan to seek opportunities. This will vastly expand Pakistani terrorist groups’ potential Chinese targets and complicate Pakistani government efforts to provide protection. More Chinese and Pakistanis are likely to suffer.
The problem for Beijing is that Chinese targets in Pakistan (and Afghanistan and further afield) will become increasingly attractive. This is in part a product of China’s growing presence and alliance with an Islamabad government that has a plethora of enemies on the ground, but it’s also because of the growing prominence of China at the global level.
Terrorist groups ultimately seek to deliver a political message to draw attention their cause; spectacular acts of violence are the tool they use to accomplish this. Each attack helps with promoting their message, recruiting, fundraising, and more. By targeting China—now the world’s second-largest economy—jihadi, ethno-separatist, and other terrorist groups are all increasingly guaranteed this attention. China is discovering that becoming a great power also comes with great risks.
More catching up from what has been a busy period for short pieces. There are some longer ones in the pipeline which will eventually land as well as the book early next week. This was for the South China Morning Post exploring the missed opportunities of China’s engagement with Afghanistan.
The flak Beijing has drawn for its Taliban engagement is not just unfair but also misses the point. If China’s Afghan strategy is to be faulted, it’s for doing too little
China has the influence and tools – not to mention incentive, as Afghanistan’s neighbour – to take a leading role in fostering peace
Illustration: Stephen Case, South China Morning Post
Now that Kabul has fallen, there is a growing narrative about Afghanistan that China is siding with the Taliban in some sort of nightmarish new alignment. The truth is that Beijing has been engaging with the Taliban in the same way that everyone has.
It is difficult to understand why we should condemn China for meeting publicly a group that the United States had earlier bolstered with meetings and a formal agreement in Doha. And it is not the only one.
Where China could be accused of failing Afghanistan is in not stepping forward to take a more proactive role in fostering an agreement, rather than simply waiting for some resolution to work itself out through bloodshed. As it turns out, this is also an echo of the approach Washington has decided to take.
China’s engagement in Afghanistan and its neighbourhood is not new. It has existed since before the September 11 attacks, growing in fits and starts.
The exaggerated narratives around Chinese potential economic plundering of Afghanistan have not played out as predicted. This, it should be noted, is much to the chagrin of the former government in Kabul, which would have loved to get the tax and investment benefits from the exploitation of the country’s natural wealth.
The Belt and Road Initiative is still a concept in Afghanistan, rather than something tangible. China has strategic and economic investments in almost all surrounding countries, but surprisingly limited investment in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, China has largely hedged. It developed relations with the Afghan government and various factions and groups on the ground. It has strengthened its direct contacts with the Taliban rather than relying solely on Pakistan to provide the connections. And it has strengthened its direct and indirect borders with Afghanistan to create a security buffer around the Wakhan Corridor.
All of this is a reflection that Beijing does not trust the Taliban any more than the US or anyone else does.
In direct security terms, Beijing has provided some military aid and support, but not much and largely non-lethal. Chinese views on the US presence have oscillated between a sense of concern that the US had active military bases on its borders to a secret sense of gratitude that the US was fighting a conflict it did not have to worry about.
The one constant in Chinese engagement has been a focus on Uygur militancy, and fears that Afghanistan could be used as a base to strike within Xinjiang. While Beijing’s views about who is supporting these Uygur fighters seem to have shifted over time, and there are questions about the scale and scope of the actual threat, it is an undeniably constant concern that China articulates at every juncture.
This is often its main point of discussion when it focuses on Afghanistan. And it is likely to be the primary concern that Beijing worries about now it has new interlocutors in Kabul.
Beijing has also engaged in multilateral diplomacy of all kinds. It has played a limited role in some of the larger international engagements around Afghanistan, offering some support and money during international donor aid rounds.
It has fostered regional multilateral engagements, and has used Afghanistan as a point of engagement with its adversaries – both Washington and New Delhi, for example, have run training programmes for Afghan officials jointly with Beijing.
And, outside direct engagement, China has tried to get the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to play a more substantial role in Afghanistan. It helped bring the country in as an observer member and fostered the creation of the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group. What this SCO action might look like in practice is unclear, but it is something that China has continually pushed.
But this also highlights the real failure of Chinese engagement in Afghanistan. Beijing has, sadly, not stepped in to take a more prominent and leadership role when it could have tried and clearly has all the links and tools in place to do so.
Beijing is ultimately going to be Afghanistan’s most powerful and influential neighbour. Pakistan may have deeper ties on the ground, but Islamabad is highly dependent on Beijing and likely to be even more so going forward.
Iran and Central Asia have also made large bets on Chinese economic partnership. China is now going to be seen as the major power across a wide swathe of the Eurasian heartland.
With all these connections, power and influence, China should logically have been a greater leader in Kabul. Admittedly, Afghanistan is a difficult country and China has little experience in conflict resolution of this sort, but it could have been hoped that it would have taken a more proactive role in a country with which it shares a border.
There will doubtless be a certain amount of joy in Beijing as the narrative is advanced that Washington is leaving from China’s neighbourhood with its tail between its legs.
And Chinese officials will seek to play up the idea that this is the end of Pax Americana and a further demonstration of American fecklessness, something they will use in their larger narratives of confrontation with the US. But the US and the West were at least trying to bolster Afghanistan and help it transform.
Pre-eminent in Beijing’s concerns should have been the realisation that, while America may have played a role in making this mess, it is China that will have to live next to it at the end of the day.
Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London
A new outlet for a well-trodden topic. Exploring the China-Pakistan relationship for Nikkei Asian Review, using the recent terrorist atrocity in Pakistan against a busload of Chinese engineers as the way into the topic and the tensions around it between Beijing and Islamabad. It has generated some chatter online which is always good to see, at least someone is reading! Undoubtedly more on this topic to come.
An attack on a busload of Chinese workers en route to the Dasu Hydropower plant in Pakistan has once again highlighted the complex precariousness of the relationship between Beijing and Islamabad.
The rapid comment by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs citing terrorism as the reason, while their Pakistani counterparts suggested an accident of some sort, did little for the dead Chinese engineers and their Pakistani guards. But it did reveal the evident tension between the two powers, in stark contrast to the public rhetoric surrounding their relationship. Rust, it seems, is weakening the bond between these iron brothers.
The most curious aspect of the tension is paradoxically visible in the public displays of fealty from Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is increasingly China’s staunchest defender on the international stage. While it is not surprising that he would agree with his most important ally’s perspective, it seems odd that he feels the need to do so repeatedly in such an ostentatious way.
Many other countries that enjoy strong ties with China have successfully avoided situations requiring them to make such displays.
While the declarations may win favor in Beijing, they are undoubtedly going down badly in Washington. Since U.S. President Joe Biden was sworn in, he has not engaged with his Pakistani counterpart in any public way. The only high-level in-person engagement has been between National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Pakistani counterpart Moeed Yusuf.
At the same time, U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has visited Delhi, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has hosted India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Washington. When Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi visited New York in May, he was able to meet with members of the Senate and Congress, but, publicly at least, there were no meetings with administration officials.
Biden himself has long-held concerns about Pakistan. As vice president in Feb. 2010, Biden told CNN that Pakistan was a large country with a “significant minority” that was radicalized and was not “a completely functional democracy in the sense we think about it,” adding that its status as a nuclear power was his biggest “foreign policy concern.”
As Washington pivots from the war on terrorism to confrontation with Beijing, Islamabad risks being left stranded in the middle. Always an awkward U.S. partner in Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal means this is no longer a primary consideration for Washington.
In the years ahead, Washington is likely to look at Islamabad through the lens of its growing tensions with Beijing, with Pakistan seen to be sitting firmly on China’s side.
All of this comes as Islamabad has been trying to signal, often through U.K. contacts, that it is eager to find ways of building a more constructive relationship with Washington. The problem is that Pakistan is no longer as important to Washington as it once was, especially as it is seen as being unlikely to do much to support attempts to contain China.
Islamabad has, however, been playing fast and loose when it comes to its relationship with Beijing. Articles in the Pakistan media discussing the China-Pakistan relationship are often peppered with off-the-record dissenting government voices hinting that significant parts of the Pakistani establishment feel they are locked in a bad relationship. Perhaps this explains why Beijing saw the need to send a new ambassador with strong party links, rather than the traditional South Asia expert.
Irritations are also building on the security front with the attack on the busload of engineers in Dasu coming after a separate incident in Quetta which came close to hitting the Chinese Ambassador, as well as earlier targeted attacks by Baluchi and Sindhi separatists on Chinese nationals and projects. Beijing is doubtless not shocked by these, but the loss of life in the Dasu incident was a step too far.
Signs that Beijing is losing patience include thunderous Global Times editorials warning Pakistan to get its house in order or China will explore deploying forces. Officially deploying a team of investigators immediately to look into the attack and being quicker than Pakistan to blame terrorists for the Dasu attack all illustrate a willingness by Beijing to start assuming the worst. The decision to cancel the next meeting of the Ministerial Joint Coordination Committee of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is the clearest signal Beijing can send about its displeasure.
This hardly speaks to a relationship that is “higher than the mountains and deeper than the oceans” as diplomats on both sides like to sing. It speaks instead of a relationship where Beijing is increasingly frustrated with a partner that has failed to deliver and appears preoccupied with mending fences with China’s principal adversary.
The bigger problem for Islamabad, however, is that their attempts to get Washington’s attention are not getting through, putting them in the position of having to continually emphasize their fealty to Beijing. Unfortunately for Pakistan, such behavior will only further deepen the rupture with Washington.
Islamabad has backed itself into a complicated position that it will struggle to extricate itself from anytime soon.
Raffaello Pantucci is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Have been slow in posting and also been slow in production of late. A few longer projects that have been working on which should land soon. And a few shorter ones which are just taking a while to land. For the time being, here is my latest for local newspaper the Straits Times, looking at China-Pakistan relations.
Last month, the obscure Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA) claimed a pair of attacks against Chinese businessmen going about their affairs in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. A bomb was detonated near a restaurateur, while a businessman and his interpreter were shot at as they looked around a car showroom.
The random attacks were not surprising, with the group being one of a number that have targeted the growing Chinese population in Pakistan, but the decision to attack so brazenly in Pakistan’s largest city showed the group’s growing ambition.
Touted as the jewel in the crown of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, Pakistan is increasingly emblematic of the problems China faces as it invests in its periphery.
Announced shortly before Mr Xi’s speech in September 2013, when he inaugurated the Belt and Road concept, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was quickly wrapped into the broader concept and elevated within the broader vision.
The idea was to create a web of economic links, trade and projects between China and Pakistan that would build on the historical relationship between the “iron brothers”.
But this proximity has brought China problems in many different forms. There have been historical concerns of militant Uighurs using Pakistan as a base to target China, though these seem much reduced now. Currently, the most prominent, direct security threat is illustrated through the attacks on Chinese businessmen in Karachi. The growing Chinese footprint has created a new range of potential targets for local militants.
In some cases, the perpetrators are internationally minded terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria who are eager to strike at foreigners to draw more attention to their cause.
LOCAL MILITANT ATTACKS
But more frequently, the danger in Pakistan comes from local separatist militants who are angry at the government, and see Chinese support as justification for targeting Chinese nationals.
The SRA is one such group. Focused on the liberation struggle of the Sindhi people, the group is active in the Sindh region of Pakistan where Karachi is located. Last July, the SRA announced a partnership with the Baloch Raji Ajoi Sangar, a grouping of organisations from neighbouring Baluchistan province.
Both the Baluchi and Sindhi groups have repeatedly targeted Chinese nationals and interests in the country – including, in the Baluchi group’s case, ambitious targets like the Chinese consulate in Karachi, the Karachi Stock Exchange, busloads of Chinese engineers and the Pearl Continental Hotel.
The attack on the hotel in May 2019 which left five people dead particularly highlighted local anger at Chinese investment. The hotel, which was established to cater to the business community that was expected to be drawn to the region, was built near the port in Gwadar, Baluchistan, a project that was first proposed during a 2001 visit to Pakistan by then Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji.
Between 2007 and 2013, the port was run by Singapore’s PSA Corp, though it relinquished the contract to a Chinese operator, having concluded that the security situation was too difficult.
Since then, the project has become the focus of discussion for armchair strategists who see it as a key point in an alternative route for Chinese access to the warm waters of the Gulf, bypassing the crowded Malacca Strait.
In reality, Gwadar is a huge underused port whose practical use is questionable even to Pakistan. Disconnected from major trading routes, adjacent to the already well-connected and thriving port of Karachi, Gwadar appears to be a white elephant, which China finds itself having to support nevertheless, given the investment and effort that has been put into it. The security situation has always been complicated, leading most recently to a discussion about trying to build a wall around the site.
These complications come not only from the fact that the much-discussed investment has not materialised in the way that was expected, but also from the fact that locals do not feel like they are getting any value from the port.
In fact, groups like the Baloch Raji Ajoi Sangar see the port as an expression of the predatory Pakistani state, supported by China, merely stealing from their territory once again.
Pakistan has long been aware of this security problem and has sought to address it through mobilising thousands of soldiers to protect Chinese nationals or projects within the country. Yet, this has not stopped repeated attacks and rising rhetoric from separatist groups in the country, making China an adversary on a par with the Pakistani state.
SUNK COSTS, RISING DEBTS
The clash is one that has become entangled with larger South Asian rows, with accusations that India is fuelling the separatists’ fight against China in Pakistan, further showing how Beijing is getting dragged into toxic local dynamics.
It is not the only way in which China now finds itself ever more deeply embroiled in Pakistan. Last month, as Pakistan faced a payments crisis after Saudi Arabia called in its debts, Beijing came to Islamabad’s rescue offering a US$1.5 billion (S$2 billion) extension to a currency swap deal. Pakistan was then able to use this to pay off the Saudi debt, but it merely strengthened China’s place as Pakistan’s largest creditor.
With reports of CPEC investments going into tens of billions of dollars, Beijing is finding itself holding large amounts of debt in a country struggling with payments and security issues.
Meanwhile, the pace of CPEC projects has slowed down, reflecting hesitation by companies as well as local managerial problems.
Furthermore, growing pressure from the United States on Pakistan has raised questions among some in Beijing about Islamabad’s commitment to the relationship, while escalating tensions with India have only made it harder to get Pakistan to focus on its immediate problems.
Part of Beijing’s answer came last October, when a new ambassador was deployed. He was not chosen from the cadre of officers from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs who are focused on South Asia, but was instead a party official from Guangxi. The decision reflects a desire by China to see a strong party hand steering the relationship forward on the ground.
The Pakistani side has reciprocated by growing the number of military officers in prominent roles managing the CPEC. Beijing has always preferred the reliability of the Pakistani military – often referred to as the backbone of the China-Pakistan relationship – to Islamabad’s feckless political class.
But the problem is that this places a massive infrastructural and economic undertaking on military officers. These are competent men in many ways, but not those usually responsible for complex economic projects.
And there is only so much soldiers can do even on security matters. On Jan 3, ISIS militants abducted and killed 11 Shi’ite coal miners in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan. Even though the Chinese were not the targets this time, the deadly attack has cast a further shadow and highlighted sectarian tensions in a Pakistani province where Chinese nationals and CPEC projects have been repeatedly targeted.
Another sign that relations between the “iron brothers” are not well: The annual bilateral meeting of the CPEC’s top decision-making body, the Joint Cooperation Committee (which brings together key Pakistani planners with their Chinese counterparts), has been postponed again after the last one in November 2019. Although the delays were initially attributed to Covid-19, the more recent setbacks are reportedly linked to disagreements over Chinese financing and delays in getting the special economic zones up and running.
Covid-19, however, did not appear to hinder China’s defence minister from visiting Pakistan last month to sign a memorandum of understanding between the two countries to counter a similar agreement signed between the US and India.
The CPEC is regularly referred to as the keynote project of the Belt and Road Initiative.
But as seen in the problems China is experiencing, it is shaping up to be a warning sign of what happens when Beijing invests heavily in countries with histories of ethnic and religious strife and insurgencies. Local corruption, instability and less-than-effective workforces can all create situations where large volumes of money get absorbed with little immediate return.
While this matters little in boom times, it becomes more questionable when budgets tighten. As Western countries have found, the expansion of one’s geopolitical footprint comes at a price.
Raffaello Pantucci is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and has a forthcoming book looking at China’s relations with Central Asia that draws on almost a decade’s worth of travel and research across the region.
A longer piece for my current local newspaper the Straits Times on a topic that have been doing a lot of work on of late, China in Afghanistan. It has been something of a running theme for some time and this tries to focus the analysis specifically through the lens of the pending US withdrawal. When I started to first really dig into this topic in the early 2010s, the discussion was Obama’s potential withdrawal which seemed to accelerate Chinese thinking. This time, it does not seem to be having the same effect.
In addition, a quick media catch up. Spoke to the Financial Times in the wake of the Austria and France terror incidents (which was picked up in Croatian), to RFE/RL about Central Asian decisions to repatriate more of their people from the Syrian camps, and on the other side of the coin spoke to David Wertime for his excellent Politico China Watcher column.
A US Chinook helicopter flying over Kabul in 2017. Beijing may now be enjoying America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it is the one that is most likely to feel the longer-term repercussions, says the writer.PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
China is enjoying the United States’ precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. From Beijing’s perspective, America’s abrupt dash for the exit as the conflict continues to rage reinforces the argument that the US is an erratic and unreliable player on the world stage.
This glee, however, should be tempered by the fact that the trouble that is likely to follow America’s withdrawal is going to cause Beijing more trouble than the seemingly never-ending conflict which it has been able to observe from the sidelines.
In the short term, China has comfortably hedged itself against all direct threats from Afghanistan.
In the wake of declarations under the Obama administration that the US was going to withdraw from Afghanistan, China started a programme of investment into the military and border capabilities of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan, countries with which it shares the Wahkan Corridor, China’s direct border with Afghanistan.
It established a forward base for the People’s Armed Police in Tajikistan, as well as built a base for Afghan forces in Badakhshan, where in the first few years Chinese forces would also patrol. The Chinese also inaugurated a new regional multilateral structure, the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism, that brought together the chiefs of army staff of the countries with which it shared the Wakhan Corridor.
China also started to more openly cultivate its relations with all of the factions on the Afghan battlefield. Previously Beijing would rely on its “iron brother” Pakistan to facilitate contacts with the Taleban. This included visits to Kabul pre-2001 to meet Taleban leader Mullah Omar and offers by companies like Huawei to help build infrastructure in the country. But while this outreach was initially done behind the scenes, from 2014 onwards China started to openly host Taleban delegations in Urumqi and Beijing, while its special envoy for Afghanistan Sun Yuxi would help organise meetings involving Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and China.
In addition, every senior visit by a Chinese official to Afghanistan was accompanied by photo calls with all of the major political leaders in the city. The result of all this engagement was statements by the Taleban that they would help protect Chinese infrastructure investments in the country, as well as regular support for Chinese perspectives by all factions in the Afghan government.
Neither side – Taleban or the Afghan government – said they would provide support for Uighur militant groups using Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks in China. In fact, both said they would actively eject such groups from their territory.
All of this has given Beijing the sense of having effectively shielded itself from the Afghan conflict. It has hardened its direct and indirect borders and has won friends across the board. Theoretically, China is well-placed no matter what happens in a post-America Afghanistan.
INDIA, U.S. AND THE UIGHURS
Yet this happy situation for China is now vulnerable to the broader tensions it has engendered through its recent aggressive foreign policy. Afghanistan used to shine for China as a place where it could cooperate with even its most difficult partners. During the Obama years, China and the US had developed a series of cooperative projects in Afghanistan, including a diplomat training programme which involved courses in Beijing and Washington. When President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met first in Wuhan in April 2018 and then later near Chennai in October last year, they discussed Afghanistan as a place for cooperation, with infrastructure as a possible area of particular focus.
But the souring of ties with the US and India has largely put paid to these efforts. The Sino-US joint programme was suspended earlier in the year purportedly because of Covid-19 restrictions, but seems unlikely to start again. And anyway, any cooperative activity between the US and China in Afghanistan is going to be complicated by the fact that the US government made a decision in October this year to remove the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from its list of terrorist organisations.
An organisation whose specific existence has long been disputed, ETIM is the catch-all term used by the Chinese authorities to describe Uighur militants. For years the US had acceded to the group’s inclusion on its list of banned terrorist groups, in part to ensure China’s support for Washington’s broader war against terrorism. But what Uighur militants do exist tend to use a different name, fighting in Afghanistan and Syria under the banner of the Turkestan Islamic Party. They talk about attacking China in their videos, and have historically claimed links to incidents in China (though the evidence of actual responsibility is limited).
Washington’s decision to remove ETIM from its list of proscribed groups hardens the rupture between China and Washington in Afghanistan. One of Beijing’s biggest stated concerns about Afghanistan is the possibility of Uighur militants operating as ETIM using the country as a staging point from which to attack China.
Yet now Washington does not even acknowledge that the organisation exists, meaning it formally disputes one of the fundamental reasons for Chinese engagement in Afghanistan. For the US to reverse this decision would require the State Department to push through legislation targeting Uighur militants at the same time as the entire US government is attacking China’s broader policy towards Uighurs through an escalating sanctions regime.
India’s position is less complicated, though it is unlikely that the government in Delhi will be very interested in engaging China over Afghanistan given current broader tensions as a result of the border clashes earlier this year.
The Taleban’s continued hostility towards India as well as Pakistan’s long shadow and close ties to China suggest it is unlikely that we will see cooperation between Delhi and Beijing soon. In fact, there are indications that we might even see the opposite.
BALUCHISTAN SEPARATISTS
One of the irritants that China has noticed over the past few years is the growing instances of violence by Baluchi separatist groups in Pakistan targeting Chinese projects in the country. These groups loudly tout their anger against Islamabad and Beijing, accusing them both of raping their land in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province while launching attacks on prominent targets linked to China such as a busload of Chinese engineers, or a hotel in Gwadar (the Pakistani port that is spoken of as the “jewel” of the wider China Pakistan Economic Corridor). They do this from bases in Afghanistan, particularly in Kandahar.
Pakistani, and increasingly Chinese, experts blame much of this Baluchi violence on Indians and their Afghan proxies. From their perspective, Delhi is playing an old game of manipulating militants based in Afghanistan against them. Place this activity alongside the American decision about ETIM, and it can look to Beijing like Afghanistan is becoming a place where two of its biggest adversaries are lining up to support anti-Chinese militant groups.
Whatever the merits of the accusations, the fact remains that Afghanistan’s geography and porous borders make it an inviting base from which militant fighters can strike at Pakistan and Xinjiang province.
TALEBAN PROMISES
China may draw comfort from Taleban statements about not supporting foreign militants in using their territory, but the Taleban’s history of reliability about such statements is quite thin.
Chinese officials and experts alike love to chuckle about how Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. They point to the futility of previous British, Russian and now American efforts to assert their might over the country. They would never be so silly as to get caught in that trap, they say.
Yet simply standing back is not going to make Afghanistan’s problems go away. China’s large mineral extraction projects in Afghanistan (a copper mine in Mes Aynak and an oilfield in the north) have not brought the Afghans the benefits hoped for. Beijing cannot but be on the watchout for its adversaries latching on to local disgruntlement against failed projects to stoke a bigger backlash.
China may not want to get dragged into Afghanistan’s troubles, but it may find itself unable to avoid them. Whether America completely withdraws or not, China will still be Afghanistan’s wealthiest neighbour with growing economic interests in every country that Afghanistan borders. Its concerns about domestic and regional threats from terrorism and instability have links into the country.
Beijing may now be enjoying America’s embarrassing withdrawal, but it is the one that is most likely to feel the longer-term repercussions.
Raffaello Pantucci is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and has a forthcoming book looking at China’s relations with Central Asia that draws on almost a decade’s worth of travel and research across the region.
Quite a bit of catch up posting to do. Been distracted with various projects, so going to do it all in one sweep this evening. First up is an article for the South China Morning Post looking at the threats to Chinese interests in Pakistan from separatist groups in the country.
China’s greatest security problem in strife-torn Pakistan is that it is increasingly becoming the focus of separatists’ attention, Raffaello Pantucci writes
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 26 August, 2018, 12:16pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 26 August, 2018, 9:54pm
The attempted suicide bombing against a bus carrying Chinese engineers in Dalbandin, Balochistan highlights the complexity of the security problems China faces in Pakistan.
The attack was a rare suicide bombing for the Balochistan Liberation Army and was specifically targeting China. It showed how Beijing is finding itself dragged into a clash whose answer lies in the resolution of fundamental issues within Pakistan.
In February this year, The Financial Times ran a story which claimed that Chinese officials had been negotiating for years with Baluchi separatists.
At around the same time, the Chinese ambassador to Islamabad gave an interview to BBC Urdu in which he proclaimed that Baluchi separatists “were not real Pakistanis” and did not pose a threat to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The negotiations story was denied by senior Baluchi leaders as well as the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. BLA leader Aslam Baloch, whose son blew himself up at Dalbandin, dismissed the talks, stating: “Our people are [disappearing] every day. They are being killed. Their houses are being looted and burned. In such a situation, any dialogue with China is impossible. We reject such a proposal.”
None of this is that surprising, nor is it impossible that China (or Chinese entities) have been in contact with Baluchi groups.
Since the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was announced, at least two publicised incidents have occurred in which Chinese nationals were almost killed by Baluchi separatists; other, similar occurrences likely have received less attention. Furthermore, many have taken place where Pakistanis have lost their lives.
In September 2016, the Pakistani government announced that at least 44 Pakistanis had lost their lives on CPEC projects. Since then, there have been many more reported incidents by the BLA specifically targeting CPEC projects – incidents they publicly link afterwards to CPEC –, leading mostly to the deaths of Pakistani guards or workers. Prior to the announcement of CPEC, at least seven Chinese workers had died at the hands of Baluchi separatists, as well as numerous Pakistanis.
And China’s problems have expanded beyond Balochistan. Since CPEC’s announcement, the targeting of Chinese interests and nationals by Sindh separatist groups has increased noticeably. After one bombing that injured a Chinese worker and his companion in May 2016 in Karachi, a note was found stating that “we will oppose every anti-Sindh project, including the China-Pakistan economic corridor”.
Just over a year later, a bomb detonated after a Chinese convoy passed in Port Qasim. A message issued soon afterwards declared: “Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army claims the responsibility of the bomb attacks on Chinese engineers in Karachi today and warns the Chinese that they should not become the part of any project in Sindh which may be against the national interest of Sindhis.”
In fact, the specific threat to China seems to emanate more from separatists than Islamists. It is true that since CPEC’s announcement, four Chinese nationals have lost their lives in Pakistan to violent Islamists, but it is not clear that China was a target in the incidents. In contrast, Baluchi or Sindhi groups loudly state that they are targeting China.
There are obvious reasons for this. For separatist groups, the Pakistani state is the ultimate enemy. As Islamabad’s closest friend, Beijing becomes a target by association. And the people of these regions do not feel like they are getting their piece of the CPEC bounty.
At a conference in Islamabad shortly before the election, I listened as representatives from Gwadar complained publicly (before numerous security officials) to a Chinese official sitting on a panel about the issues they were having accessing fresh water.
This example illustrates a problem that Beijing faces in Pakistan and can be found in other BRI countries as well. The problems of separatism and central government anger in Balochistan and Sindh are not new. Violence in the country is not new (and is in fact in decline), but China is increasingly becoming the focus of attention as the biggest outside player who is focusing on supporting the central state.
And while the Pakistani government can provide some support and security for Chinese nationals sent to deliver CPEC in the hope that the economic prosperity it may generate will help alleviate these issues in the longer term, this is only part of the answer.
The longer-term answer to the problems of separatism in these regions are to be found in political solutions: issues that infrastructure and mining investment will not resolve, and may in fact be exacerbating.
As Rehan Baloch stated in his message before he tried to murder a busload of Chinese engineers: “Through this act, I want to make China and its people realise [that] whosoever will try to meddle in Baloch issues without Baloch nation’s consent, will face the wrath of Baloch nation.”
Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
Have failed to keep up on posting working on longer things. Have a few longer pieces which will eventually land, but in the short run a few opinion pieces in the South China Morning Post, looking at the Belt and Road in various incarnations. First, a piece about South Asia, intended to be in the wake of the Wuhan Summit meeting between President’s Xi and Modi.
Raffaello Pantucci writes that a China-India symbiosis stemming from the infrastructure projects being built in Pakistan will force the West to rethink its South Asia strategy
There is an air of possible change in South Asia. After a positive summit in Wuhan, presidents Modi and Xi both made it clear they wanted the event to be the opening gambit in a rapprochement between India and China.
The modest practical achievements presented from the meeting should be seen as positive, illustrating that both powers are aware of the tensions and limitations of their relationship.
Nevertheless, the decision to focus on Afghanistan as a possible source of Indo-Chinese cooperation highlights the leaders’ willingness to be ambitious in their thinking. In Islamabad, however, there is a sense of concern about Pakistan being the potential loser in this larger regional rapprochement.
This short-sighted logic is founded on the perennial tensions that exist between Delhi and Islamabad. Yet, it misses a few key elements. China is clearly committed to Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is the flagship project of the broader “Belt and Road Initiative” concept that Xi Jinping has advanced.
The People’s Bank of China’s expansion of the currency swap between the countries highlights a doubling down of China’s willingness to continue to invest in Pakistan.
The imprimatur given to the project by President Xi highlights the degree to which this part of the broader concept has to be delivered on, notwithstanding the sometimes awkward economic logic that underpins some projects.
For China, the undertaking is an important one and tied not only to its domestic security and prosperity, but also to the strategic assets it receives from its interest in the Gwadar Port.
But the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor sometimes does frustrate and worry Beijing. While Chinese diplomacy is an exemplar of keeping disputes out of the public eye, there are some issues.
Workers have been murdered and various insurgent and terrorist groups around the country have made specific targets of Chinese nationals and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in an attempt to undermine the government.
That the Chinese consulate in Karachi had to issue a travel advisory to nationals earlier this year, dissuading them from travelling to Quetta, illustrates the security concerns China feels in the country.
That the minister responsible for managing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (who is also the interior minister) was injured by an assassin’s bullet does little to inspire confidence in Pakistan’s national security.
None of this is to talk about the awkward economics that exist around some of the corridor’s projects.
And China has proven willing in the past to side with Delhi on security problems. The statement after the BRICS summit last year in which China agreed to specifically single out some Pakistan-based groups for criticism, as well as Beijing’s regular efforts to get Delhi and Islamabad to talk after incidents, highlight the Chinese government’s awareness of the problems that exist.
What Islamabad needs to bear in mind is that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is not the only part of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is one strand of Xi Jinping’s bigger foreign policy concept. It is not even the only South Asian corridor (the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor is another slow burning concept), but rather the first to be implemented with vigour.
The ability of China and India to hold a summit and discuss ideas for cooperation sensibly when hawkish administrations are in both Beijing and Delhi, reflects the underlying direction in which South Asia is moving.
For China and its companies, India is in many ways the bigger game to play. The growing number of tech purchases by Chinese firms in the Indian market highlights an awareness of India’s booming potential. And beyond India, China realises that a more interconnected, stable and cordial community of South Asian nations will ensure the prosperity that will help stabilise China’s immediate land peripheries.
Afghanistan needs stability to be prosperous and not export problems to Central Asia, Pakistan and, ultimately, China. From Beijing’s perspective, this will only work if the country is more connected to its region.
Wang Yi and other officials have talked about connecting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, but it is not clear how positively Islamabad views this idea. The corridor will only deliver the prosperity that will help Pakistan grow if it is a truly regional project, and this means it must connect better with its immediate neighbours as well as those in the Khunjerab Pass area.
This is the point Islamabad needs to keep in mind: China and India want to find ways to engage and tap each other’s economic opportunities.
India may be sceptical of the broader belt and road plan, but it remains keen to engage in some aspects of it, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the chance to bring Chinese investment into the country. A nation hungry for investment, Modi’s India is keen to find any way to grow to catch up with its richer Asian neighbour.
For Beijing, this is an opportunity in every direction: a prosperous India would be good for China. A prosperous and stable Pakistan would be a net boon. And a stable and secure Afghanistan would achieve a long-awaited goal for the entire region.
While Beijing is still working out how it will manage to deliver on this vision, the direction of travel is clear – and should be appreciated, not just by the region but the world.
Notwithstanding the tensions that will undoubtedly create some bumps in the road, the ability to hold a summit and discuss ideas for cooperation sensibly when hawkish administrations are in both Beijing and Delhi, reflects the underlying direction in which South Asia is moving.
Islamabad needs to pay attention before casting all its chips in one basket; the West needs to focus on what South Asia’s course means for any attempts to use India as a counterbalance to China.
Ultimately, these Asian giants know their own backyard, and will focus on that over any global ideological confrontation.
Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Islamabad should not fear signs of Sino-Indian rapprochement
Another slightly longer piece about China lands this time in Current History, ‘the oldest US publication devoted exclusively to world affairs’. This looks at China’s growing push into South Asia, and India’s increasingly tense response to it. Somewhat relevant but a bit late for this piece, a Chinese colleague recently described managing relations with India as ‘ticklish’ which struck me as quite apt. This topic is going to grow in significance as time goes on, and am sure will end up doing more about it. In the meantime, for those interested in similar topics, check out the China in Central Asia site. I have posted a version of the paper here, but do check out the Current History site as well for the rest of the excellent journal.
“Beijing’s miscalculations regarding India have created conflict with a regional power that has the capability and desire to disrupt China’s outward push.”
At a conference in China a few years ago, I watched as a Chinese expert gave a presentation laying out Beijing’s view of the military conflict that it faced in nearby seas. It was largely a story about the United States and East Asian competitors, and China’s aggressive assertions of ownership of islands in the South China Sea. At the end of the presentation, a former Indian officer raised his hand and indignantly asked why India had not been mentioned as a competitor.
In a moment of surprising candor, the Chinese expert responded that he did not include India because, from his perspective, it did not pose much of a threat to China. The answer riled the Indian participant, but it reflected a fundamental calculation that exists in Beijing about India. It is a calculation that could cause serious complications for China’s broader South Asian vision, and ultimately provoke a clash between the two Asian giants.
At stake is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a much-discussed and puzzled-over concept. It has been variously described as a Chinese power grab; an attempt by China to promote its companies’ overseas interests and build infrastructure to suit its own interests; an effort by Beijing to claim leadership of the international order; or, by Beijing’s own account, a project to bind together a “community of common destiny.” But it is really best understood as an umbrella concept that acts as a central organising principle for China’s foreign policy.
The core of this scheme—building trade and economic corridors that emanate from China in every direction—strengthens China’s position in the global order and across the Eurasian landmass. The aim of these corridors is not only to help Chinese firms go out into the world and increase China’s trade connections. Most importantly, they will help China develop domestically.
Ostensibly, this is a benign concept. By improving trade and transportation links through investments in infrastructure, China is enhancing the global commons. Few would say that more eco- nomic connectivity and prosperity is a bad thing. But the reality is of course very different. China is advancing its own national interests, and is doing so by offering a one-size-fits-all policy—which means that it can appear to be proffering the same opportunity to European powers and Southeast Asian neighbors alike. While this is a perfectly understandable self-interested approach, Beijing has been blind to geopolitical problems that it is exacerbating and which may in the long term disrupt its entire strategy.
Raffaello Pantucci 