Notwithstanding his weakened position at home, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf this week flies to China , the “all weather friend” that has stood by the country through all its troubles.
Unlike its American friends, the Chinese have not blown hot and cold, although there have been challenges such as attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan, including the execution of three workers near Peshawar last year and concern that the Islamist fervour sweeping the northwest parts of Pakistan was spilling over to neighbouring Xinjiang, China’s troubled, predominantly Muslim region.
But the Chinese do not give Pakistan lectures on democracy, the dangers of nuclear proliferation - which arguably isn’t surprising since some of it is traced back to the Chinese, according to non-proliferation experts- or threaten to bomb them into the Stone Age , which is what Islamabad says the Bush administration did to enlist its support in its war on terrorism days after Sept 11.
China, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told parliament in his opening address last week, was a time-tested ally and the friendship “was deeper than the Indian Ocean and higher than the Himalayas”. On Monday, a Shanghai shipyard launched the first of four frigates to be delivered to the Pakistan navy, while the Pakistani air force has already inducted a fighter aircraft co-produced with China. Beijing has also helped Pakistan build civil nuclear plants.
Pakistan’s alliance with China is far more enduring that the one with the United States, a scholar writing for the YaleGlobal Online argued last month, characterising the relationship with Washington dating back to 1954 as an intermittent, Cold War marriage of convenience. The current U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been built on security interests and is already looking fragile following the outcome of the February elections when the party supported by ally Musharraf was routed.
Pakistan’s alliance with China, in contrast, is based on permanent strategic interests and immutable issues of geography, including China’s desire for access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, scholar Willem van Kemenade says in the article. And unlike the sometimes public polemics with Washington over the war on militancy, Pakistan and China are quietly cooperating to ensure things don’t go out of hand in China’s far west.
Indeed, Musharraf will be winding up his visit in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where he is expected to appeal to local Muslims to cooperate with the authorities and not to be misled by followers of Tibet’s spiritual leader Dala Lama trying to stoke fires there, as B.Raman, a former additional secretary at India’s Research and Analysis Wing, the external intelligence arm, says in a paper for the India-based South Asia Analysis Group.
So has China been a better friend than the United States and is the relationship as solid as ever?
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To My More Than Friends Chinese Neighbours:
Dear All,
Firstly, through this message, I want to convey my heartiest apologies for the loss of your lives on our soil. We truly deem those lost lives as ours. That unfortunate event, a cowardly act of our common enemy, has indeed embarrassed the entire Pakistani Nation.
Being a Pakistani (thus actually knowing the genuine great feelings and goodwill in the hearts of Pakistanis for the Great Chinese Nation) I must say without a moment of delay that most of the comments above are irrelevant. China-Pak Friendship has always been pain in the A of the helpless failure haters. They would continue to make every conceivable effort to deceive us and we will continue to fail them and burn them each time even more in the hell of their jealousy :o)
Pak-Cheen Dosti Zindabaad!!!!!!!!!!
Love,
Ali
Islamabad
- Posted by AliPakistanis are simple people they think china is their friend.Well here’s a tip in statecraft,there are no permanant friends only permanant interests which is why you should never ever paint yourself into a corner lest the dynamics change.
Your utility to china is a nuisance to harass India but in the next 15-20 years if we become china’s #3 trading partner and settle the border dispute and find ourself on the same side of WTO and other issues where would you be?
Have you considered what would happen if the world moves beyond oil?Where would S Arabia be?
Learn from us we are moving closer to the US(and the West) but are still staunch allies of Russia.
If China is such a dear then why isn’t it giving you a massive aid package given their forex reserves you know 50-60bn USD their forex reserves are almost 2 trillion.Instead they give you something like 1 bill and in return ask you to sign a FTA which is guarenteed to wreck what little industries you have.
Don’t let your hatred of India blind you.We frankly don’t like pakis but we love India a lot lot more than we hate Pakistan.
- Posted by Shantanu ChatterjeeShiming Fan Writes: “(What a joke! Tibet under Dalai lama was a theocracy with 95% of the populations being slaves to all those temples. Should the Chinese restore the King to France after the French revolution and Free France?)
The strange thing is that China helped two destructive states to develop nuclear technology. One of those states happens to be a “theocracy” like Iran. The other one is a mixed of religious extremism and militarism, Pakistan.
- Posted by KaburaThe Chinese always treated the Pakistani as the most reliable friends in their troubles. Throughout the years, when there are waves of anti-Chinese movements in the world, the Pakistani stood by China.
This friendship had gone deep into the heart of common Chinese. When there are troubles like the hostage of Chinese workers, the Chinese knew there it was not a reflection of the feeling of Pakistani people. In fact, those terrorist kidnappers are separatists who wanted independence from Pakistan.
In Europe, the Chinese used to treat the French people differently. They though many Chinese current leaders, like former Premier Zhou, and Deng Xiaoping, studied in France. Old generation French leaders also gave an understanding to China, willing to listen, and had forged a very good relationship with China. To many Chinese, France represents the warmth of Europe, a friend and an ally. You can guess how shocked they are when they see all those violent actions by the Frenchmen in Paris. (Though, I have to admit, many of those violent attackers of the Olympic torch may not be Frenchmen. I noticed the man who attacked the handicapped Chinese sportswomen on the wheelchair was in London a day ago. Professional protesters, I guess. And later he was exposed to live in Salt Lake city. But the Chinese could not distinguish).
French report is also totally biased. Simply ignoring the fact that it was the Tibetan mobs who were killing Han Chinese and Muslims on the streets (18 killed, a baby stoned to death with her mother, 5 girls burnt to chars), they used the mob center: Da Liar lama’s governments information with no source to describe the Tibetan mobs as peaceful demonstrators. The 1200 shops set on fire by the Tibetan mobs were used evidence of “Chinese crack down”–when the Chinese policemen were not even in town yet. The arrogant and younger leftists in France, unwilling to even look a bit more into the facts, quickly reacted by accusing China of being a hooligan. The Chinese, on the other side, felt deeply wronged and betrayed by their friends in France, and their emotions are now backfiring into the current anti-France movement.
A tragedy, is not it?
Limo liberals like to think they are the archangels of a new world order, but many times, they are like some Red guards, start to think what is good for me, must be good for others, and I am all-seeing, all-liberating, free Tibet! (What a joke! Tibet under Dalai lama was a theocracy with 95% of the populations being slaves to all those temples. Should the Chinese restore the King to France after the French revolution and Free France?)
- Posted by Shiming Fang