Throughout June 2024, a string of events in both Pakistan and China suggested that bilateral ties were at a crossroads.
Pakistan remains in financial turmoil, with bailouts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) only narrowly keeping the country afloat. Meanwhile China, Pakistan’s largest foreign investor, has begun wavering on further investment, due to a deteriorating security situation that has tested the limits of a supposed “all-weather friendship.” These circumstances set off a chain reaction, beginning with a state visit by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to China and ending with the announcement of a new country-wide military operation aimed at suppressing Pakistan’s many ongoing insurgencies. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will now wait attentively to see if such measures are successful and if its business in Pakistan can resume as normal.
On June 4, Sharif began a five-day state visit to China, where he met with his Chinese counterpart Li Qiang, as well as the country’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping. Accompanying the prime minister, the Pakistani delegation featured Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, and Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir, signalling a narrow agenda for the trip focused entirely on financial and security concerns.
This was Sharif’s first time back in China since his re-election in February, following a contentious vote that was marred with allegations of vote rigging and irregularities, and which sparked serious concern across many Western governments.
Ahead of his arrival in Beijing, Sharif took considerable steps to mitigate any potential obstacles set to arise during his talks with Li and Xi. At the end of April, Chinese independent power producers (IPPs) operating throughout Pakistan were owed $1.8 billion in unpaid bills. Aware that such outstanding payments could prevent further, much needed investment, Sharif and Dar approved a payment of over $700 million, nearly halving the total debt owed to these Chinese state-owned IPPs.
In doing so, Sharif hoped to pave the way for future Chinese investment in the country, particularly in its energy sector. In the short term, this move appears to have paid off. A joint statement released at the end of the Pakistani premier’s trip confirmed that an additional 23 agreements and memoranda of understanding had been signed facilitating further bilateral cooperation in a range of areas, including energy and infrastructure.
For China, however, there are greater obstacles to its continued involvement in Pakistan than the latter’s ability to pay back what it owes. Late payments of a small fraction of Pakistan’s total debt to China are less of a concern to Beijing than the seemingly untameable militancy that is currently sweeping through the country. This was a point made abundantly clear by Chinese officials in discussions with the Pakistani delegation.
As a result, condemning recent attacks against Chinese workers, reaffirming a joint commitment to combating terrorism, and enhancing security were just a few of the agreements reached between the two parties by the end of Sharif’s trip. Xi also ensured that Pakistan’s largest power broker was made aware of this priority, by personally holding lengthy talks with Pakistan Army chief Munir.
Two weeks after the delegation’s return to Pakistan, China’s demands for improved security measures were emphasized once more in further high-level meetings held in Islamabad. On June 21, China’s Minister of the Central Committee of the International Department of the CCP, Liu Jianchao, met with a range of Pakistani politicians from various parties, alongside the country’s deputy prime minister.
The talks took place under the banner of the Pakistan-China Joint Consultative Mechanism, a body set up largely for discussions related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), but one that has hardly met since it was first convened back in 2019. The decision to reinvigorate the forum now, with Chinese engagement in Pakistan potentially wavering and further CPEC investment uncertain, is revealing and demonstrates the urgency with which Beijing requires Islamabad to act on its domestic security situation.
For a political landscape fraught with divisions, it is noteworthy that Liu was able to bring together key members of multiple different parties, including Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the religiously conservative Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam–Fazl. Understanding the necessity of keeping China happy appears to be the only issue that Pakistan’s political parties can unanimously agree on.
Liu’s warning to his cross-party audience was stern. He stressed that “security threats are the main hazards to CPEC cooperation” and that without an improvement, Chinese investors would look elsewhere for opportunities. Once more, China’s grievances were not only voiced to Pakistan’s political class, but its military as well, with Liu also holding talks with Munir at the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi.
One day after Liu issued his ultimatum to the political and military elite of Pakistan, Sharif announced the start of a new military strategy aimed at quelling the country’s many insurgencies. Azm-e-Istehkam, or “Resolve for Stability,” is set to breathe new life into Pakistan’s 2014 National Action Plan against terrorism, purporting to be a multifaceted approach to a problem that has plagued the country for decades. The strategy will see kinetic action taken against militants throughout the country, including in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where Chinese workers have been the target of multiple attacks this year alone.
Azm-e-Istehkam’s primary target, however, will be the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), operating in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. Skirmishes between the Pakistani military and the TTP have raged throughout the year, with the army suffering heavy losses in clashes at the end of May.
The ongoing TTP insurgency has strained Islamabad’s relations with the Taliban government in Kabul. Pakistani politicians had hoped that the Taliban’s return in 2021 would reduce militancy in the border region, but this optimism has since proved misplaced. Instead, Pakistan’s new strategy has seen renewed aerial strikes conducted by the military against targets inside Afghanistan, much to the latter’s dismay. Beijing may soon be dragged in to play mediator between two parties whose stability is essential to China’s regional ambitions.
It is not solely the launching of Azm-e-Istehkam that is significant; after all, this is the latest in a long list of operations that date back to the time of Pervez Musharraf’s military rule in the 2000s. Rather, it is the accompanying pledge of the Pakistani government to provide “measures to ensure foolproof security for Chinese nationals in Pakistan” that is particularly important. Considering the current dynamic between Islamabad and Beijing, and the leverage the latter wields over the former, it is reasonable to conclude that the CCP played a substantial role in actualizing this renewed approach.
This would not be the first time that China has exercised influence over a Pakistani military operation. Beijing demanded the release of its nationals following a terrorist attack in 2007, before pressuring its neighbors to root out Uyghur militants seven years later. This is, however, the first time in which Pakistan’s relationship with China has been contingent upon such an operation being a success. And with bilateral ties at such an imbalance, Islamabad cannot afford to get this wrong.
To aid in their efforts, there have been suggestions that Pakistan may look toward China to play a role in Azm-e-Istehkam, a move that will provide the CCP with even more sway over the most powerful functions of the Pakistani state. Yet, seemingly in contradiction, Islamabad has also looked toward Washington for arms sales to bolster counterterrorism efforts. U.S. policymakers will now have to weigh up the value of supporting a historically unreliable ally in its pursuit of aiding Chinese strategic ambitions.
Following a string of attacks against Chinese targets in Pakistan this year, future assistance and investment from China seemingly now rests upon the Pakistani government’s ability to improve the security situation in the country. In high-level diplomatic meetings with Pakistani lawmakers and its military leadership, both in China and in Pakistan, Chinese leaders have laid out in unequivocal terms the need to eliminate rampant militancy if Chinese aid and investment is to continue flowing into the country.
The announcement of a rebranded strategy in such close proximity to these discussions leaves no uncertainty as to the role played by Beijing in influencing this decision. While previous attempts have yielded some short-term military successes, Islamabad will need Azm-e-Istehkam to go one step further and resolve this longstanding issue with a permanency that those before it have failed to achieve. If unsuccessful, Pakistan may well find its closest and most important ally rethinking bilateral relations altogether.