China-Pakistan : The End of the All-Weather Friendship?

[nomi007]

China-Pakistan : The End of the All-Weather Friendship
its wrong title
now the suitable title is
China-Pakistan : the beginning of brotherhood

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

That is your advantage here.

You have to just make the right noises.

If it is so easy, then why doesn't India do it?

It was for the insatiable hunger for resources, ethics may go take a hike as far as the CCP is concerned.

And it wasn't ethics either that led to the Indian Government supporting the LTTE terrorists, the Mukti baini or the Tibetan Government in Exile. They were all geopolitical chips to be used against India's neighbours.

 

[Vinod2070]

If it is so easy, then why doesn't India do it?

Even you can't do it with everyone.

Try it with Korea or Vietnam.

And it wasn't ethics either that led to the Indian Government supporting the LTTE terrorists, the Mukti baini or the Tibetan Government in Exile. They were all geopolitical chips to be used against India's neighbours.

So you support the Darfur genocide that your money and arms helped perpetuate?

And all those dictatorhips?

 

[Developereo]

I didn't realize civilian nuclear power stations were used by the Pakistani army to suppress the population. Not to mention all the infrastructure projects.

Indian desperation is a constant source of hilarity. Jumping from one proposition to another -- even contradicting themselves in the process -- just to satisfy their sad little conviction that everything in the region revolves around India and nobody other than India can have mutually beneficial relationships.

Although we are always glad to witness the Indian heartburn in action.

 

[Vinod2070]

China-Pakistan : The End of the All-Weather Friendship
its wrong title
now the suitable title is
China-Pakistan : the beginning of brotherhood

OK.

So after more than 5 decades of the higher than and deeper than, this is what you have from your brothers?

Negative views of Muslims were also strong in several Asian countries: Half or more of the Japanese, Indians, Chinese and South Koreans surveyed said they had negative impressions of Muslims.

Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attitudes rise in Europe - The New York Times

Both the Chinese and Japanese express generally unfavorable views of Pakistan, while the Chinese tend to feel negatively toward India as well.

Publics of Asian Powers Hold Negative Views of One Another | Pew Global Attitudes Project

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I didn't realize civilian nuclear power stations were used by the Pakistani army to suppress the population. Not to mention all the infrastructure projects.

Indian desperation is a constant source of hilarity. Jumping from one proposition to another -- even contradicting themselves in the process -- just to satisfy their sad little conviction that everything in the region revolves around India and nobody other than India can have mutually beneficial relationships.

Although we are always glad to witness the Indian heartburn in action.

Desperation from your rivals is usually a good sign.

 

[Developereo]

When one silly canard doesn't fly, it's time to run off into familiar territory about Islam. It's only a matter of time before we hear about 'kaffirs'...

Pathetically predictable.

Negative views of Muslims were also strong in several Asian countries: Half or more of the Japanese, Indians, Chinese and South Koreans surveyed said they had negative impressions of Muslims.

Given the dominant media narrative about Pakistan and Muslims, combined with a low percentage of Muslims (i.e. lack of direct interaction with actual Muslims), these figures are to be expected. They are in line with other countries with small Muslim populations.

We wont worry too much until they kill 2000 Muslims in a deliberate, state-sponsored massacre like in India.

What speaks volumes is that, despite having a 13% Muslim population, half or more of Indians had negative impressions of Muslims. Thanks for exposing Indian bigotry.

 

[Vinod2070]

The general Pakistani narrative is that the Chinese are saving Pakistan from the Pakistanis.

An open question is how true it is and how long can it sustain.

Grow up, and smell the coffee

By Irfan Husain

Saturday, 26 Dec, 2009 | 01:44 AM PST |


THE late Enid Blyton enriched my childhood with tales of adventure and derring-do, as she did for millions of kids around the world. I am happy to see her Famous Five and Secret Seven series still on sale, an indication that some things, at least, have not changed.

However, I did not associate the author with serious, philosophical views until I came across this quotation attributed to her: “Growing old is compulsory; growing up is optional.” The more I reflected on these words, the more I saw how relevant they were for Pakistan as a nation.

In the 1950s, the constant refrain I heard was how young a state Pakistan was as an excuse and an explanation for the new country’s many failings and shortcomings. Gradually, this mantra has faded as Pakistan grew older, even though things have got worse, not better, with the passage of years.

As I look around, I see many signs of a country that has grown older, but has failed to grow up. For one, we remain too immature as a nation to reflect on where we have gone wrong, and what needs to be done to set matters right. We live from one day to the next, confident in the expectation that generous adults will look after us, no matter what transgressions we commit.

In the event, foreign aid has propped us up, relieving us of the tough decisions we need to take in order to make Pakistan a viable, prosperous state.

Other examples abound. When we see we can’t have something, we tend to throw a tantrum and dig in our heels instead of moving on. For over 60 years, we have been fixated over the Kashmir issue. Whatever the legal rights and wrongs of the matter, the harsh truth is that India is not going to budge, and there is nothing Pakistan can do to change this reality.

Hundreds of billions of rupees and thousands of wasted lives later, we are where we were decades ago. In fact, we have lost whatever diplomatic support we once had. The world is heartily sick of the dispute, and wishes we could just put the matter to rest and move on.

We are aggressive and touchy to the point of paranoia. Take the recent furore over the Kerry-Lugar law as a good example. For weeks, the media and the military were in hysterics over the evil intentions of the Americans who were bent on throwing billions of dollars in our direction.

Pundits and TV anchors fulminated and frothed at the mouth, insisting that somehow ghairat or our national honour had been affronted. Then suddenly, as though a switch had been turned off, this crescendo of irrational argument ceased. What had changed? Probably the dollars had started coming in, and nothing shuts up a needy teenager like a fistful of cash.

Like most young boys, we love playing with toy guns, only in Pakistan’s case, they take the shape of lethal weapons, including nuclear ones. All nations have armed forces and arsenals, but they do not generally take such pride in them. In Pakistan, derelict jet fighters are mounted in public squares; models of missiles decorate parks; and mock-ups of Chagai where our first nuclear tests were conducted, sprout in open spaces.

Kids usually hate being mocked or criticised, and take umbrage at the smallest slight, whether it is real or imagined. So, too, do our leaders. A few months ago, a law was seriously being considered to prevent people from passing around jokes about the president on the Internet, or by SMS. This move drew much derision internationally, and was mercifully dropped.

More often than not, children are intensely self-absorbed, caring little for the needs of those around them. Similarly, our well-to-do tend not to think about the rest of their countrymen, focusing only on their immediate families. And when they do give to charity, they are concerned only about how their alms will buy them a place in heaven. Partly as a consequence of this callousness, poverty continues to stalk the land. Illiteracy, hunger and disease are endemic. Nevertheless, enclaves of obscenely ostentatious wealth flourish amidst a vast ocean of poverty.

Impatience is another attribute of the young. Living only in the present, they want everything now. So, too, do our politicians demand regime change whenever they are not in power. Unwilling to wait for a government to complete its term of office, they plot with the military or the judiciary to overthrow the ruling party so they can grab power. More often than not, the army uses these discontented politicians as levers to upset the political applecart.

This refusal to follow the rules and allow a government to complete its tenure is rife among the media as well. Thus, we can see the feeding frenzy among TV chat show panellists and their hosts in the wake of the NRO judgment that has dealt the PPP government a severe blow. In fact, we can almost see these people salivating at the prospect of more political upheaval.

Like children with a short attention span, we get bored with the same ministers saying the same thing after a year or so. We just cannot understand that above all, we need a period of political stability and tranquillity. And we desperately need a consensus to fight the jihadis who are threatening to tear down the foundations of our state. Despite these dangers, we continue to squabble like kids; far from developing a common front, we are doing everything we can to destroy our political rivals, destabilising the entire system in the process.

Faced with harsh reality, many kids escape into fantasy. We, too, continue nursing dreams of a united Muslim ummah that would be able to take on the hated West. In Pakistan, various extremist groups are committed to restoring Muslim rule over the entire subcontinent.

But while individuals can indulge in daydreams, nations do so at their own peril. So wake up and smell the coffee. Above all, let’s please try and grow up.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Search Results grow up, and smell the coffee | Latest news, Breaking news, Pakistan News, World news, business, sport and multimedia | DAWN.COM

So, the real reason is that China is expected to take care of a Pakistan that refuses to look after itself.

 

[Vinod2070]

When one silly canard doesn't fly, it's time to run off into familiar territory about Islam. It's only a matter of time before we hear about 'kaffirs'...

Pathetically predictable.

What is "Pathetically predictable" is your need to explain it away.

It is not about "Islam". It is about Pakistanis and Muslims.

And I know you want to run away from this reality. As if it never existed.

Given the dominant media narrative about Pakistan and Muslims, combined with a low percentage of Muslims (i.e. lack of direct interaction with actual Muslims), these figures are to be expected. They are in line with other countries with small Muslim populations.

These perceptions in the case of China have to be influenced by their own media more than the CNN or BBC.

Why? After all those decades of higher and deeper than?

Is that not a question to ask?

We wont worry too much until they kill 2000 Muslims in a deliberate, state-sponsored massacre like in India.

Or the 5600 Shia killed in Pakistan? The Shia being hunted down in their buses, their doctors being target killed by state sponsored tanzeems, the Sufi mosques being blown, the mosques of rivals being captured all over Karachi?

So, it was all about India after all in the end.

What speaks volumes is that, despite having a 13% Muslim population, half or more of Indians had negative impressions of Muslims. Thanks for exposing Indian bigotry.

Not at all surprising when the nation was divided in the name of Islam.

 

[Developereo]

What is "Pathetically predictable" is your need to explain it away.

It is not about "Islam". It is about Pakistanis and Muslims.

You turn every discussion into a rant about Islam and Muslims since that is all you know. Your knowledge on all other subjects is non-existent so you always run to familiar territory.

This one-track "debating" of yours gets boringly tiresome.

And I know you want to run away from this reality. As if it never existed.

How am I running away? I accepted the numbers and explained why that is so, and is in line with similar countries around the world.

These perceptions in the case of China have to be influenced by their own media more than the CNN or BBC.

Why? After all those decades of higher and deeper than?

Is that not a question to ask?

High profile terrorist incidents are global events. Why should we expect the Chinese media to block news of major world events?

So, it was all about India after all in the end.

Your post mentioned India and I provided context.

Not at all surprising when the nation was divided in the name of Islam.

Here we go...

 

[Vinod2070]

You turn every discussion into a rant about Islam and Muslims since that is all you know. Your knowledge on all other subjects is non-existent so you always run to familiar territory.

This one-track "debating" of yours gets boringly tiresome.

It was about the fact that the Chinese people seem to not reciprocate your love for them.

And it is clear from the nyumbers.

How am I running away? I accepted the numbers and explained why that is so, and is in line with similar countries around the world.

"similar countries around the world" don't claim to be higher than and deeper than!

High profile terrorist incidents are global events. Why should we expect the Chinese media to block news of major world events?

It can't be only about "High profile terrorist incidents" in some distant place. Can it?

Your post mentioned India and I provided context.

It also mentioned Japan and Korea. At this point the focus was on China.

Here we go...

Remains a fact. Despite the discomfort it seems to cause.

 

[Fracker]

Pakistan Iran can not be friend (as for now) coz,
1. They are neighbours , None of Pakistani neighbours have good relation with her.

India?

2. One is Shiete and another is sunni country. Both Faction of Islam hate each other to death (Correct me if I am wrong).

Interestingly, when ever you sit with Sunni scholars and discussing shia's they always gives examples of iran's shias.

3. Pakistan is in Lap of USA, and Uncle SAM will not let it happen.

OLD news.

4. Balochistan

Iran or Iranians never claimed Baluchistan as their entity, Infact, they will never want an unstable Baluchistan, since iran also has their Baluchistan which can become unstable.

 

[kawaraj]

I would like to advise you to respect the original article title.

report reason: misleading wrong title, copyright issue.

 

[iPhone]

Indian lobby is hard at work putting a wedge between Pak-China relationship.

 

[PakShah]

China-Pakistan : The End of the All-Weather Friendship?

Evan A. Feigenbaum
December 4, 2011

China is often called an "all-weather friend" to Pakistan -- a strategic partner, a reliable source of trade and aid, and Islamabad's closest military ally. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani has described the friendship between the two countries as "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, and sweeter than honey." In September, he told the visiting Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu, "Your friends are our friends," continuing, "your enemies are our enemies, and your security is our security."

But do things look so straightforward when viewed from Beijing? To be sure, Chinese money pours into places Western cash fears to tread. But Beijing is not oblivious to risk. In fact, Chinese money flows disproportionately to investments that carry little to no risk and deliver returns that, however modest, are predictable. Moreover, at least some Chinese companies have proved willing to abandon investments as their perception of risk has risen. In September, for example, Kingho, a large private Chinese miner, is reported to have abandoned a proposed $19 billion investment to build a coal mine and power and chemical plants in Pakistan's Sindh province after reassessing investment and security risks.

Indeed, Beijing's investment calculus is increasingly based on a sophisticated balancing of three types of risk: geopolitical, political, and financial.

Geopolitical risk (not least China's rivalry with India) has long led Beijing to support Islamabad through thick and thin.

Friendly ties between the two help satisfy four Chinese strategic objectives:

They ensure security and stability in China's western provinces and along its continental Asian border; anchor China's poorer western provinces in a web of cross-border economic activity; bottle up India in the subcontinent, forestalling the emergence of a continental-sized rival and precluding more extensive Indian security activities in East Asia; and assure that no other major power, particularly the United States, advances its interests in continental Asia at China's expense through, for instance, military deployments or permanent access arrangements.

Beijing aims to use Islamabad to box out New Delhi in Afghanistan and the broader region.

In recent years, these four objectives have become ever more pressing, reinforcing Beijing's inclination to support Pakistan. Take the issue of securing China's western border. The drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan will, unavoidably, prompt serious questions in Beijing about Kabul's capacity to maintain security. That, in turn, will prompt still larger questions about whether Pakistan and Central Asian governments can suppress extremist groups and ideologies that may emanate from Afghanistan's and Pakistan's tribal areas and bleed across the Chinese frontier.

Beijing also aims to use Islamabad to box out New Delhi in Afghanistan and the broader region. Thus, India's expanding reach into East Asia is no doubt reinforcing China's reflexive tilt toward Pakistan.

Until now, India has been, at most, a third-tier Chinese strategic concern -- distantly behind internal insecurity and challenges in the East Asian littoral. But India's rapid economic growth has given it a growing strategic profile beyond South Asia. India is becoming an Asian power and a global player. It is deepening defense ties with Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, four countries that are wary of China's rise and also are increasingly close to the United States. And New Delhi has signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Singapore, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as a comprehensive economic partnership with Japan. As India's strategic reach expands, a continuing rivalry with Pakistan that preoccupies its diplomacy and pulls its attention back to its own neighborhood remains a net positive for Beijing.

Through this traditional geopolitical prism, then, Beijing's relationship with Islamabad appears unassailable. But Beijing no longer has the luxury of looking exclusively through this single lens. Increasingly, it also balances the political, and especially financial, risks to its interests.

Chinese nationals in Pakistan have come under unprecedented attack in recent years. And Beijing is ever more sensitive to protecting those citizens -- mostly engineers and other skilled workers -- abroad. Libya proved a watershed in this regard because of the scope and sheer scale of the Chinese presence there. The onset of violence yielded a robust debate in China about the state's responsibilities to its citizens overseas. Sensitive to domestic perceptions and pressures, Beijing undertook its largest ever noncombatant evacuation, removing some 35,000 Chinese nationals from Libya by chartered merchant vessels, chartered and military aircraft, and overland buses. The Chinese navy also dispatched a frigate to support the operation, an unprecedented long-range operational deployment.

This means that Islamabad cannot forever presume that Chinese workers and money will stay in Pakistan if those assets come under attack on a larger scale. Beijing has shown little stomach for telling Islamabad to rein in anti-India insurgent groups that operate from Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. But those groups that have killed or kidnapped Chinese nationals are another matter.

And China appears to have begun sorting and distinguishing these anti-India proxies from domestically focused groups, such as the Baloch separatists or pro-Taliban elements that could pose a more existential threat to Chinese interests. Balochistan has seen repeated attacks on Chinese nationals, including a 2004 bombing that killed three engineers working at the Gwadar port and a 2006 attack on a bus near Hub. In response to one kidnapping case, conducted by elements associated with the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, Beijing placed ferocious pressure on the Pakistan army to intervene.

But it is investment risks, not geopolitical or political ones, that are more likely to alter China's long-standing calculus in Pakistan. Chinese money generally follows the flag, yet global trends suggest that Beijing is becoming vastly more sensitive to investment constraints and macroeconomic conditions. It is often taken for granted that Chinese companies can bear more risk than their Western counterparts and that Beijing will underwrite the kinds of investments from which most other governments and firms would shy away. But as China's global reach has grown, so, too, has its economic incentive to revisit these practices.

There are, for example, intriguing parallels between China's conundrum in Pakistan and the problem it faces in Europe. In both cases, debt-laden economies have aggressively sought to attract a portion of Beijing's considerable stock of investment capital -- its $3 trillion pool of foreign exchange reserves. But Beijing is weighing such activities against the many problems it must now manage at home. Investment in such environments has grown more difficult to sell domestically. As one pithy post put it on Weibo (a Chinese version of Twitter): "Better to save [debt-burdened] Wenzhou than to rescue [debt-burdened] Europe!" And when China does invest abroad, it is under enormous pressure to ensure a positive return.

So it matters more than ever that Pakistan faces an array of economic constraints, including a debt-to-GDP ratio that crossed 60 percent in 2010; painful debt service obligations to its creditors; a large fiscal deficit; double-digit inflation; a depreciating rupee; a trade deficit worsened by high global commodity prices; and above all, the lack of a credible growth strategy.

Chinese financiers will be increasingly skeptical of the returns on investment into such an economy. And here, too, domestic politics come into play. Most of China's population has been left out of the growth miracle of the reform era, and the resultant income and development gap is economically and politically unsustainable. To address the problem, Beijing has been trying to redistribute resources to less wealthy inland provinces that are increasingly important to political stability. Road and infrastructure construction in Pakistan, as well as a bilateral free trade agreement, are tied to Beijing's effort to develop these regions. But these projects will increasingly need to meet higher expectations for returns than did China's traditional low-strings approach to aid.

All this means that China's calculus in Pakistan is becoming more diverse. The central question will be the extent to which political, and especially investment, risks begin to complicate the straightforward geopolitical calculus that has long yielded a remarkable intimacy between Beijing and Islamabad.

To be sure, Beijing is too strategically tied to Pakistan -- and too timid in its diplomacy, in any case -- to off-load an erstwhile ally. But China is unlikely to be such an accommodating patron, either. Thus, it will prove less willing to fund the ambitious infrastructure development schemes Islamabad favors. And what is more, the scope and scale of future Chinese economic activity will not, in itself, produce rapid, sustained, and balanced Pakistani growth.

In the long term, economic interaction with India -- the restoration of traditional regional ties and natural economic affinities in the subcontinent -- will almost certainly be more decisive.
In both Europe and Pakistan, debt-laden economies have aggressively sought to attract a portion of Beijing's considerable stock of investment capital. But Beijing is weighing such activities against the many problems it must now manage at home

The bottom line is that China will not simply "bail out" Pakistan with loans, investment, and new untied aid, as commentators watching the deterioration of relations between the United States and Pakistan seem to expect. Rather, China's involvement in the country will closely reflect Beijing's own priorities and evolving risk assessments.

For its part, the United States, which has failed to induce greater Chinese "pressure" on Islamabad, may be able to take advantage of China's new calculus to pursue complementary approaches focused on economics and finance. Countervailing interests, including China's effort to hedge against a growing U.S.-Indian partnership, will continue to obstruct strategic coordination between the United States and China in Pakistan, especially on anti-India and Kashmir-focused militant groups.

But the more the two countries' economic threat assessments converge, the more Beijing and Washington should be able to turn a shared but abstract interest in Pakistan's "stability" into more complementary policies.


China

I know many will have itch to troll but plz stay to the topic as its a serious discussion.

Did anyone bother to check where the article was published?

It was published in Foreign Affairs magazine. Its a western magazine. They will try their best to mock the Pakistani-Chinese friendship.

The friendship between Pakistan and China is at an all time high. It is at a high it has never been before, and its only going to get stronger.