Since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1951, Sino-Pakistani relations have steadily deepened, and the two countries have never had a public disagreement over any bilateral, regional, or global issue. If there was any wrinkle in their mutual relations, it was amicably resolved in private, outside the view of the world’s eye. The key to this closeness has been the frequency of highest-level contacts between the two countries, which yielded unprecedented results. A case in point is the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Pakistan in April last year, which led to the signing of the “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Good Neighborly Relations” (Dawn, April 6, 2005). The treaty binds both signatories to desist from joining “any alliance or bloc which infringes upon the sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity of the other side” (Ibid.).
Similarly, General Musharraf’s third state visit to Beijing on February 19-23, which was a week apart from President Bush’s planned visit to South Asia in March, further strengthened the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Good Neighborly Relations. On February 20, China and Pakistan signed 13 agreements in Beijing, while President Hu Jintao and General Musharraf remained present at the signing ceremony. Of these, agreements on defense production, particularly the manufacture of multi-role JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, nuclear power generation, and strategic infrastructure-building, including the widening of the Karakorum Highway, are critically important to the future direction of Islamabad’s relations with Beijing.
Joint Defense Production: JF-17s
Nothing explains Pakistan’s Sino-centric relations better than its defense and strategic ties with Beijing. Since the 1970s, these relations have continued to deepen and widen with progressive expansion in defense cooperation. Joint defense production, however, peaked in the 2000s. Today, all three branches of the Pakistani military—land, air and navy (in that order)—are equipped with Chinese weapons systems. Taxila Heavy Industrial Complex, situated near Islamabad, was the first seed of mutual collaboration that sprouted to branch off into building components for air defense. As a result, a state-of-the-art Aeronautical Complex was built at Kamra, a small town in Attock district of the Punjab province. Most recently, Beijing has offered Islamabad a helping hand in building two frigates at its naval base in Karachi, which will be a landmark breakthrough in their joint naval defense production as well. General Musharraf, at the conclusion of his five-day visit to Beijing, declared that “defense relations have been the bedrock of Sino-Pakistan relations” (Dawn, February 25). The hallmark of their decades-long defense collaboration, however, is the joint production of JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, which General Musharraf described as a “great success.” He favorably compared JF-17s with the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 fighter jets “in platform engine, maneuverability, avionics and capability of carrying various modern weapon systems” (Ibid.).
JF-17s are being manufactured in Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan province. In 1999, Chengdu Aircraft Industry Company (CATIC) signed an agreement with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) for joint production of JF-17s. Since then, CATIC, Chengdu Aircraft Designing Institute and the PAF have been working on this project. They rolled out the prototype of JF-17 on September 3, 2003, the test-flight of which satisfied both Chinese and Pakistani pilots. Almost two-and-a-half years later, General Musharraf watched the demonstration flight of the aircraft on February 22 when he visited Chengdu, Sichuan, which is China’s center of high-tech defense production. General Musharraf was so impressed by the manufacture of JF-17s that he had a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between China and Pakistan to declare Sichuan and Punjab (Pakistan’s most populous province that predominantly contributes “manpower” to the country’s three services) as “sister provinces” (Dawn, February 22). Pakistan is now celebrating JF-17s as worthy substitutes for F-16s.
Although Pakistan did receive 40 F-16s from the U.S. in the 1980s and is expected to receive an additional 80 F-16s this year, it still faces problems in their maintenance and service as its access to spare parts and manufacture technology is highly regulated (Dawn, February 25). This is what, Pakistan thinks, makes the U.S. an “unreliable” arms supplier, pushing Islamabad into the instinctive embrace of Beijing, which it considers an “all-weather friend” (Daily Times, February 24). Since 9/11, the U.S., however, has taken important measures to rebuild Pakistan-U.S. relations into longer-lasting cooperation. A case in point is Pakistan’s upgraded status as a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. to the perceptible unease of India, its arch rival. Yet Pakistan views such steps as symbolic as compared to the emerging strategic partnership between India and the U.S.
Nuclear Power Production
Pakistan is especially wary of the Indo-U.S. agreement on the transfer of nuclear power technology to Delhi, which is expected to be finalized during President Bush’s visit to India later this week. Since the signing of the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement on July 18, 2005, when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a state visit to the U.S., Pakistan has been lobbying the U.S. to allow it the same access to nuclear power technology, but to no avail. It is not just the ruling Republican Party in the U.S. that is averse to providing Islamabad with nuclear reactors; leaders of the Democratic Party are even more adamant on this issue. Senator John Kerry, who visited Pakistan this year on January 14-15, told a news conference in Islamabad: “India is a democracy and it has adhered to the non-proliferation agreement in all the years of its involvement with nuclear facilities. This is not yet true of Pakistan, though Pakistan is moving in that direction” (The Hindu, January 16). Pakistan is, nevertheless, pursuing a plan to generate 8,000 MW of electrical power from nuclear fuel by 2020, an ambitious plan that makes it look to Beijing for support.
Beijing has already provided Islamabad a 300-MW nuclear reactor (Chashma-I), which is sited in a small town—Chashma—of the Punjab province. Beijing has now agreed to provide another nuclear power plant—Chashma-II—which will be sited next to Chashma-I. It will take five years before Chashma-II becomes operational. In addition, Pakistan is in talks with Beijing to buy six to eight nuclear power reactors of 600 MW each over the next decade (Press Trust of India, January 3). If the talks are successful, Pakistan will buy a number of nuclear reactors at the cost $10 billion to produce 4,800 MW of electricity. Pakistan’s current production of nuclear power is just 425 MW (Ibid.). Although Pakistan denies any such talks, it did sign an agreement with Beijing on February 20 to further “deepen cooperation in peaceful application of nuclear power.” In addition, Pakistan and China signed an “energy cooperation framework agreement,” which will explore the possibility of a gas pipeline between Iran and China through Pakistan (Dawn, February 22).
Strategic Infrastructure: the Karakorum Highway
Besides, China and Pakistan are engaged in building key strategic infrastructures to further strengthen their defense ties. The construction of the Karakorum Highway (KKH)—which connects western China and its largest autonomous region of Xinjiang with Pakistan’s Northern Areas (NAs) all the way through Islamabad—was the first such major project. Since its completion in the 1970s, the Karakorum Highway has been used for limited trade and travel, however. In harsh winters, the stretch running through the Northern Areas and Xinjiang becomes unusable for motorized traffic due to heavy snowfall. Chinese and Pakistani engineers have since been trying to render it into an all-weather passageway. Yet limited trade and travel remained a poor incentive for such an expensive undertaking, until its renewed strategic significance became all too apparent in recent days. In a strict strategic sense, KKH is considered priceless. It gives Beijing unhindered access to Jammu and Kashmir in India, in addition to enabling it to the India’s movement along Aksai Chin, which China seized from India in 1962, severing India’s land-link to China’s turbulent autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. For Pakistan, the KKH is an added security for its turbulent Northern Areas, all the way up to Siachin where Indian and Pakistani troops have been in a stand-off since the mid-1980s.
On February 20, China and Pakistan agreed to widen KKH for larger vehicles with heavier freight. The rebuilding of KKH will enable China to ship its energy supplies from the Middle East from Gwader Port in Baluchistan through the land route of KKH to western China, which is its development hub. This alternative energy supply route will reduce Beijing’s dependence on the Malacca Straits. General Musharraf also wants to set up a “crude transit route” through Gwader Port for Beijing’s energy shipments from Iran and Africa. For this reason, Pakistan is building oil refineries, natural gas terminals, oil and gas equipment, and transit facilities in Baluchistan. China has agreed to help Pakistan with its plans for the development of its oil and gas industry. With this planned elaborate energy infrastructure, KKH has assumed an added significance as an alternative land link between China and its energy sources, of which Iran sits atop.
Beijing and Tehran are now all set to sign a $100 billion agreement on developing Iran’s Yadavaran oil field in southern Iran as early as March this year (Reuters, February 17). Under this agreement, China will buy 10 million tons of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Iran each year over the next 25 years. KKH would be the shortest and safest land route to ship Iranian LNG to western China. In return for LNG, China will develop the Yadavaran oil field, which is estimated to have three billion barrels of oil and is expected to produce about 300,000 barrels of oil per day, which is equivalent to China’s current imports from Iran (Ibid.). General Musharraf wants to turn Pakistan into China’s “energy corridor” for Chinese energy imports from the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Africa (Daily Times, February 18). He also wants Pakistan to be China’s “trade corridor” for its exports to Central Asia. For the latter reason, Pakistan has recently built the Torkham-Jalalabad road in northwestern Pakistan (i.e., Pakhtunkhaw province) and Chaman-Kandahar railroad link in Baluchistan to carry Chinese manufactured goods to Central Asia through Afghanistan.
China generously recognizes General Musharraf’s contribution to forging even closer relations between Beijing and Islamabad. It also wants Pakistan to play a bigger role in the region, for which General Musharraf has asked Beijing to upgrade Pakistan’s observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to full membership. China will notify all SCO member states of Pakistan’s request to consider it at the SCO’s scheduled summit meeting this year (Dawn, February 20). To honor his contribution and his visit to Beijing, China put General Musharraf’s face on its postage stamps, which is a rare gesture even by Chinese standards.
Conclusion
Defense and strategic ties are the bedrock of Sino-Pakistan relations, which are too solid for any hint of weakness. Their ambitious future agenda for high-tech defense production (such as JF-17s and Frigates), nuclear power generation, and strategic infrastructure building (such as KKH and deep-sea Gwader Port) will further energize their ties. Although Sino-Pakistan relations have flourished under all military governments in Islamabad, General Musharraf has taken them to even greater heights by signing a territorial defense treaty in April last year, and literally and metaphorically putting (JF-17) “thunder” in Sino-Pakistan relations.
Sale of JF-17 Thunder jets to start next year
October 25, 2013
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has decided to start sale of state of the art JF-17 Thunder combat jets developed in collaboration with China to other countries from next year. According to sources, a sum of $100 million has also been released to Pakistan Ordinance Factories Wah in connection with up-gradation of its machinery. Pakistan Aeronautical Complex Kamra has carried out up-gradation of Cobra Helicopters presently under the use of army besides installing high tech system therein. Pakistan will also import modern helicopters from Turkey. The Ministry of Defence Production sources said as many as 42 JF-17 Thunder planes have been developed so far under joint venture with China. The Pakistan Air Force has been assigned target of exporting 5 to 7 JF-17 Thunder planes next year and discussions in this regard are under way with Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Qatar and other friendly countries. The Ministry of Defence Production officials have expressed optimism that Pakistan would succeed in exporting these modern planes during the next year. The sources said Heavy Industries Taxila has manufactured prototype of Buraq vehicle to defuse land mines and remote control explosive material. It has also been learnt that Pakistan is continuing dialogue process with Turkey to acquire T 120 high tech helicopters from the latter. Pakistan is also endeavouring to launch a joint venture with Turkey with reference to manufacturing of these helicopters. If both the countries don’t agree over it then Pakistan will execute agreement with Turkey to purchase these helicopters. The sources said that PAC Kamra has refurbished several helicopters being used by Army Aviation. Pakistan has acquired these helicopters from the US and they have now been upgraded. Modern technology has been installed therein while the US voiced its concern over it.
US administration has a penchant for not listening to the advice of its own diplomats. They sent a brilliant diplomat to Pakistan, Ambassador Munter, who in a short time repaired the broken relationship between the two nations. He became one of the most popular US diplomat ever sent to Pakistan. Why? Because, Amb.Munter represented the heart and soul of what the US psyche is about and even the most hostile Pakistanis respected him. But, the US shooting in its own foot syndrome took over and Amb.Munter was removed as US Ambassador. He is fondly remembered by all Pakistanis as a friend, not a “Master.”
There was a time, when a US President would say to Pakistan, “JUMP,” and the Pakistan Government would respond, “HOW HIGH.” But, US has government under Mr. Obama’s Administration has mastered the art of shooting itself in the foot. It has a penchant to kicking its long time friends in the shins, while cavorting with their wily enemies, like in the case of India. One wonders whether the US government Foreign Policy is run by people with Ph.Ds. in Incompetence. The talking heads of Brookings and Stimson Centers are more interested in pushing their own Foreign Policy Agenda’s than the interests of the people of these United States. The key power group, which governs US Foreign Policy, is AIPAC, to which US interests are secondary as long as Zionists interests are being served. US Think Tanks, Academia, and the Zionists, who hurt US interests at the expense of their hidden agenda, heavily influence Press. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous blowback of this one point agenda, a manifestation of which is seen as the creation of an extremely hostile public reaction against the US in the Islamic world. US serve 20 million Jews, but neglects nearly 1.1 billion Muslims. Some Islamic countries have found other options to replace the benefits they received from US. In Pakistan, China has played a remarkable role in providing a shoulder to Pakistan, when, the US administration left it reeling under the chokehold of War on Terror. US Organizations blindly flailing away in a panic mode after 9/11 and making wrong decision and chasing shadows, until, t came to a point where the US paranoia amounted to building dungeons in air. Instead of searching for the root cause of this behemoth disaster, they became the judge, jury, and the investigators in fixing the blame, smack dab on whole of the Islamic World. This served as a bonanza to Zionists interests and the unleashed a tsunami of propaganda against the Islamic world on the organs of public opinion they controlled, such as TV (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX), Newspapers like the New York Times a.k.a Jew York Times and its evil twin the Washington Post. Even local sources of news like TV news and Press started publishing the bylines written in the evil twins. Thus, Islam and Islamic Nations were demonized to the hilt. Every Jewish and Hindu Temple became a media hub and majority of news men and reporters in their congregation became news savant on the connection between Islam and 9/11.Everyone forgot, the attack on USS Liberty by Israelis to incite US to go to war against Egypt. BlackOPS are alive and well, but, ostrich like attitude of the only Global Power, cannot prevent them from happening over and over again. The lingering suspicions remain in the Islamic World that 9/11 was perpetrated to trigger a Crusade type War between the US, its Christian NATO Allies and the Islamic has proven true. Any person or organization when ventures to ask tough questions about 9/11 are mocked and made to appear as not credible by the same media and press, which serves the Zionists, instead of US interests. What is the outcome of such actions? Simply, that US is fast losing any friends it has in the Islamic world, except, a coterie of dictators, or “democratically,” elected leaders, like the corrupt Asif Zardari and Hamid Karzai. The latter keeps frightening the US government about the Bogeyman or Taliban, while under the covers rooting them on. Mubarak, Marcos, and Thieu of Vietnam have played this duplicitous game many times with the US. All this leads to the sacrifice of young American lives at the altar of arrogance and ignorance. Few, years, after such wars are over, US starts hobnobbing with the enemies, who killed their best and the brightest, case in point, Vietnam and Germany. When will US government learn not to shoots its own foot and differentiate between friends and enemies? Currently, India, which backstabbed US during the Soviet era is the darling of US Foreign Policy makers, however, little do they realize, that during times of stress or war for US,
India would bail out in a heartbeat. US Policy Makers should ask one question: How many Indians have died in US initiated Wars, including the War on Terror. The answer is ZERO. On the other hand Pakistan, the Non-NATO US Ally has lost 3000 soldiers and over 30,000 civilians in War on Terror. But, US continues to snuggle with the wily and conniving Indians, because they are too dumb to know that India is taking them to hell in a hand basket while laughing all the way to the bank. The NRI or Non-Resident Indians, even though they are US Citizens, break the Oath of US Citizenship, by calling themselves not US Citizens of Indian origin, but, they call themselves, Non Resident Indians or NRIs, so much for their loyalty to the US constitution. They steal US IT Programs, SAP, and Hardware designs and start competing companies in India. The call center denizens of Indian origin spy on US citizens credit reports and pass them on to unscrupulous fellow Indians to scam elderly US citizens. Thus US has lost its IF Radar, it cannot tell, a friend from foe and in doing so drives its steadfast friends like Pakistan to more reliable and trust worthy nations like China. In return Pakistan rewards its friend like China with access to its warm water ports like Gwader, Ormara, and Karachi. This access also connects the nations of the Middle East and Europe to a shorter sea cum land route to China via the all weather Karakoram Highway. As Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar:
There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves. Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224
For the US the ship has already left the port!
Pakistan middle class fixes sights on China
March 11, 2013
When Misbah Rashid taught Chinese 30 years ago, few signed up. Today her department has more than 200 Pakistani students, increasingly attracted by the prospect of an affordable education and a job.
For decades, a foreign education was the preserve of the richest who could afford the stratospheric expense of sending their progeny to Oxford or Harvard to mingle with an international elite. But Rashid’s pupils are mostly middle class. Ambitious and academic, they lack the means to afford an American or British education and so they sign up for Mandarin Chinese at theNational University of Modern Languages in Islamabad. Some of them hope to get a job with a Chinese company in Pakistan. Others will go on to further studies in China, which offers around 500 scholarships a year and cheaper fees.
A course in China costs a few thousand dollars a year, compared with the tens of thousands of dollars US and British universities charge. What is more, some Pakistanis say their great northeastern neighbour makes them feel more welcome. “Nowadays as Pakistanis, you may not be as welcome in all other countries as we were a few years ago,” says 18-year-old Ali Rafi, who applied to study economics at Shangdon University after visiting last summer. “But when we went to China, there was one major difference in that we felt at home, the relations with people were really, really good. We were always welcomed, honoured and everyone was really pleased when they learnt we were Pakistani.”
He studies at City School, one of the private schools in Islamabad that has started to offer Chinese lessons to children as young as 12, who sing in Mandarin under the watchful eye of their teacher, Zhang Haiwei. If everything goes well, the classes will be rolled out across the school’s other 200 branches in Pakistan. And other private schools are doing the same. Pakistanis complain about the difficulty of getting visas and of the suspicion their nationality can arouse among those who associate Pakistan with Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, particularly in Britain and the United States.
The British government says that overall, 20 percent fewer student visas were issued in 2012, compared to the previous year. The US mission in Pakistan says it supports the world’s largest US government-funded exchange programme, sending over 1,000 Pakistanis on fully funded educational programmes to the United States every year. The independent Institute of International Education says 5,045 students from Pakistan studied in the United States in 2010-11, but that the number has declined steadily since 2001-02, the academic year of the 9/11 attacks.
There is also considerable resentment of US policy, including the “covert” use of armed drones to carry out attacks in Pakistan on militants. Whereas Chinese investment, China’s reluctance to admonish Pakistan in public, its rivalry with India and status as an emerging global superpower give it considerable goodwill.
— China’s growing presence in Pakistan —
The job market is another consideration. Pakistan’s main trading partner is still the European Union, but trade with China reached $12 billion last year, up 18 percent from the previous year. China is also Pakistan’s main arms supplier. Beijing built two nuclear power plants in Pakistan and is contracted to construct two more reactors. There are an estimated 10,000 Chinese living in Pakistan. Last month, it also took control of Pakistan’s strategic port of Gwadar, which through an expanded Karakoram Highway could connect China to the Arabian Seaand Strait of Hormuz, a gateway for a third of the world’s traded oil.
Mushtak Ahmed, 19, has enrolled under Rashid precisely because of the Chinese influx into Pakistan’s northern province of Gilgit-Baltistan, where China is widening the highway to its border. “Lots of Chinese people are coming to our area and they just speak Chinese and we cannot understand it… so there is a need for translators,” he said. According to Pakistan’s embassy in Beijing, around 8,000 Pakistani students are already studying in China and thousands more are preparing to join them. Former ambassador to Beijing and Washington Riaz Khokar said wealthy Pakistanis tend not to return after studying in the West, but China offers a technical education that will benefit the Pakistani economy.
“The Chinese economic presence in Pakistan is growing so why should there be Chinese managers or Chinese at various levels? The idea was (that) we should train.” China has accused the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which wants an independent homeland in the western Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, of training “terrorists” in Pakistan, although experts question how much of a threat they are. But the relationship has few of the tensions that Pakistan suffers with the United States, which repeatedly presses Pakistan to do more to clamp down on militants who launch attacks on American and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.
“I have dealt with their intelligence, I have dealt with their army, I have dealt with everybody at the highest level. They have never told us ‘do this or we will kick you as the US does,” said Khokar. But if political relations are cosy, then Haiwei says ordinary Chinese professionals are more circumspect. “In Pakistan we have more than 6,000 Chinese students. However, we have maybe about 50 teachers. We don’t have enough teachers. Some people found it dangerous so they don’t want to work here,” he said.
Pakistan, China joint military exercise YOUYI-IV in mid November ‘Pakistan Times’ Federal Bureau
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan, China Joint Military Exercise YOUYI-IV is scheduled to be held in mid November in Pakistan.
The joint exercise, spread over a period of two weeks, is aimed at mutual exchange of experience and information through a comprehensive training programme in real time, a press release issued by ISPR said here on Thursday.
The exercise will encompass techniques and procedures involved in Low Intensity Conflict Operations (LIC) environment. This joint interaction in form of military exercise aims at sharing and enhancing expertise of both armies in countering terrorism.
Exercise YOUYI which literally translates ‘FRIENDSHIP’ between the two countries started in 2004. Pakistan Army was the first foreign army to conduct any exercise on Chinese soil. So far three exercises have been conducted; including two in China and one in Pakistan. These exercises were mandated to boost existing professional relationship between the two friendly Armies.
It may be mentioned here that Pakistan and China enjoy extremely close and brotherly relations since their inception, which have matured and strengthened over the years. The forthcoming Joint Military Exercise YOUYI-IV will certainly pave the way for further cementing the existing bilateral relations between Pakistan and China.
Chinese navy to join Pakistan exercise
The 14th Chinese naval squad heading for Somali waters will take part in a multi-national exercise in Pakistan in March, military sources said Sunday. The “Exercise Aman-13″ is scheduled to start in the North Arabian Sea March 4. Aman is an Urdu word meaning “peace”.The fleet, sent by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, departed Saturday from a port in Qingdao of east China’s Shandong province to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters for escort missions.
The 14th convoy fleet comprises three ships — the missile destroyer Harbin, the frigate Mianyang and the supply ship Weishanhu — carrying two helicopters and a 730-strong troop, all from the North China Sea Fleet under the PLA Navy.Since December 2008, authorized by the UN, the Chinese navy has organised 14 fleets to the waters of the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters to escort 5,046 Chinese and foreign ships.More than 50 Chinese and foreign ships have been rescued or assisted during the missions. – KahleejNews
