Pakistan, which possesses nuclear weapons, is nevertheless almost totally dependent on the People's Republic of China for military weapons systems, infrastructure improvement and energy projects.
Pakistan is also in debt to China, its largest creditor, to the tune of $29 billion. Without continued Chinese financial assistance, Pakistan would fail to meet scheduled repayments of its international debt, which now amounts to $130 billion.
Pakistan's foreign policy decision-making is also reportedly hostage to Chinese influence. Islamabad has even established joint border security programs with Chinese paramilitary teams, an arrangement that additionally threatens Pakistani sovereignty.
China supplies more than 80% of Pakistan's weapons systems, from spare parts to jet fighter aircraft. China also provides Pakistan's navy with guided missile frigates. A recently released US Defense Intelligence Agency report stipulates that Pakistan has urged China to provide it with the J-35A stealth fighter to improve its performance in any future conflict with India. Chinese weapons already in Pakistan's inventory, such as JF-17 fighter jets and PL-5 missiles, failed to repel India's May 7 strike on Pakistani airbases.
It seems certain that Pakistan could not fight a large-scale conventional war against its archrival India without massive and continuous Chinese military resupply. Sweden's Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute (SIPRI) asserts that four out of five weapon systems in Pakistan's inventory are Chinese. Only with a wartime decision by China to open a second front against India, would Pakistan have a chance.
A few years ago, China and Pakistan celebrated 70 years of their so-called "Iron Brotherhood" and "All Weather Alliance." The alliance evolved from Pakistan's refusal to condemn China's participation in the Korean War in the early 1950s. Today, Beijing is crucial in preventing Islamabad's government from economic collapse.
Upon Islamabad's request, Beijing has, once again, been willing to roll over Pakistan's scheduled debt repayments and to issue new loans. China's financial rescue of its South Asian ally probably saved Pakistan from having the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declare it global credit risk. Such a declaration by the IMF could have resulted in the severe curtailment of foreign investment, as well as to decreased access to additional international loans. Consequently, if this had materialized, even China, might not have been able to stabilize the government of Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, which already is struggling to survive amidst soaring inflation, a weakening currency, high unemployment and dwindling foreign reserves.
China might initially have hoped that Pakistan would serve as a model to attract interest from other states to embrace its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China has sponsored 122 BRI projects in Pakistan, and might also have hoped, as with other BRI investments, to create a debt trap for Pakistan, as it has for other nations. When a country is unable to repay its debt to China, China simply helps itself to that country's assets – ports, minerals, whatever -- as collateral on the loan. As of 2021, according to The Guardian, "Researchers have identified debts of at least $385bn (£286bn) owed by 165 countries to China for 'Belt and road initiative' (BRI) projects..."
Phase II of the China/Pakistan BRI Plan has been accelerated to be fully implemented by 2028 in order to address Pakistan's pressing needs, such as job creation and developing alternate means of energy production.
Two interconnected flagship projects of China's BRI program in Pakistan significantly threaten to reduce Pakistan's national sovereignty: the "China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and the Gwadar Port Facility in Southwestern Pakistan along the coastline of the Arabian Sea.
CPEC is a transportation project running the length of the country, connecting Pakistan's Arabian Sea ports of Karachi and Gwadar with China's Xinjiang Province, where the Chinese Communist Party has virtually enslaved the region's ethnic Uighur people. Both projects appear to serve China's interests more than they do Pakistan's. CPEC employs Chinese engineers, railroad workers, and paramilitary security personnel. Pakistan agreed, nearly a decade ago, in a de facto abridgment of Pakistan's sovereignty, to establish joint security patrols on both sides of its 600-mile border with Xinjiang to satisfy Chinese security concern that Uighur guerrillas could be using Pakistani territory as a safe haven. Islamabad, late last year, even acquiesced to Beijing's insistence that Pakistani border police be trained in a Chinese paramilitary academy in Xinjiang.
Pakistan's latest sovereignty-concession is its caving to China's insistence that it improve relations with Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Pakistan's anger at the Afghan Taliban stems from a belief that the regime in Kabul has granted territorial sanctuary and financial support to its "cousins" in Pakistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP has staged terrorist attacks in Pakistan over the last few years, resulting in the killing of thousands of soldiers and policemen. The TTP's primary objective is to overthrow the government of Pakistan, replacing it with a strict Islamist state. Despite this bloody feud between the Kabul and Islamabad, Beijing has agreed to extend the CPEC BRI project to include Afghanistan.
The planned expansion of Pakistan's Gwadar Port complex will facilitate and accelerate the delivery to China of vitally needed oil from the Arab Middle East. Gwadar is likely eventually to serve as a Chinese naval base, which will help challenge India's prominence in the Indian Ocean. Gwadar also would provide China with increased power projection in the Indo-Pacific Region. China's aggressive intrusion into its permissive ally Pakistan, certainly, violates Beijing's stated "Principle of Non-Interference" that supposedly governs its diplomatic relations.
This latest projection of power in the Indian Ocean region is similar to what China has already achieved off the Horn of Africa, with its naval base at Djibouti, and -- take notice, United States and its Latin American allies -- what Communist China could be planning for Peru's new mega-port on the eastern Pacific.
Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
