Henry Kissinger’s book On China reminds one of the Great Wall. Long, meandering, formidable, it is designed to keep intruders away from the Inner Kingdom of his private papers. In comparison, Andrew Small’s The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics is akin to a Chinese ball puzzle - meticulously crafted, breathtaking in its detail, and articulated so that its seven chapters can rotate independently of each other.
Small spent over six years studying his subject. He describes it as ‘an intellectual orphan, falling between a variety of disciplines [because] the obstacles facing the analysts in their efforts to find reliable sources and establish facts make it that much more tempting to neglect.’
As if to compensate for that arid paucity, Small has compacted 180 pages of text with over 1,200 references. No chapter is longer than 26 pages; none has less than 100 references. The book is dense, not unlike the populations of China and Pakistan.
In 1950, Pakistan was one of the first countries (certainly the first Muslim country) to recognise the re-minted People’s Republic of China. The Chinese have never forgotten that. Its support for Pakistan knows no seasons. That support began with diplomatic camaraderie, then gradually deepened into concentric levels of economic assistance, military know-how and materiel, missile development, nuclear technology, and most recently terrorism control.
Ever since its independence, Pakistan has been used by the United States, abused by the Soviet Union, opposed by India, and manipulated by Saudi Arabia. China however has shown a patriarchal tolerance towards its young neighbor, using (in Andrew Small’s words), ‘a blend of temperate support, gentle scolding, and steely pragmatism’. To China’s chagrin, a delinquent Pakistan ‘oscillates between hope, self-deception, public exaggeration, and resigned realism’.
Both China and Pakistan share borders with India; India shares an enmity with both. According to an Indian diplomat quoted by Small, China views India as ‘a pretender too big for its boots’. His Pakistani counterpart believes China sees Pakistan as ‘a low-cost secondary deterrent to India’. The Chinese prefer to watch India and Pakistan stay locked together in ‘a state of managed mistrust’.
The Chinese leadership, despite its assurances that ‘a distant friend is not as helpful as a near neighbour’, will never be able to dispel India’s wariness of its ambitions, however artfully these may be wrapped. Schemes such as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st century Maritime Silk Road (President Xi Jiping’s ‘string of pearls’) merely accentuate India’s fear of encirclement. It is not alone. North Korea and Myanmar share its apprehensions.
Small’s thesis is that Pakistan forms ‘a central part of China’s transition from a regional power to a global one.’ That explains why China is determined to invest in Pakistan, and never tally the cost. ‘Pakistan’, General Xiong Guangkai once admitted with unusual candour, ‘is China’s Israel’.
Chinese technological support for Pakistan began in earnest during the 1970s. It was soft and non-lethal in nature – e.g., the Heavy Mechanical Complex and the Heavy Foundry Forge at Taxila. However, during and particularly after Pakistan’s 1971 conflict with India over East Pakistan/Bangladesh, in which China extended moral, diplomatic and materiel support but refused to open a front on India, the level of cooperation entered a new phase.
The Chinese became bolder, its aid more overt. Its assistance ballooned into mega projects such as the northern Karakoram Highway, the southern port of Gwadar (which a Chinese company operates and to which China has announced a commitment of over $30 billion), and two more nuclear power plants – Chashma III & IV – to augment two supplied year earlier. These will cost China another $6.5 bn.
China’s trade with Pakistan in 2001 was close to $1.1 bn. This year, it is expected to reach $ 15 bn., making China Pakistan’s second largest trading partner. Chinese investments in Pakistan have doubled over seven years.
Militarily, China has taken its own advice. It has taught Pakistan’s military how to fish. The Pakistan army now manufactures tanks locally (the Al Khalid). Pakistan makes short and medium range missiles -the ballistic missile Shaheen I, M-11 missiles, and the Babur cruise missile based on the Hong Niao Chinese prototype. (Small tells us that Pakistan could have made them on its own; it would have taken ‘longer’.) The Pakistan Air Force with Chinese help now makes JF 17 Thunder and JF 10 fighter jets at Kamra. The Pakistan Navy has received Chinese F-22P and four Jianwei class frigates, also C-602 anti-ship cruise missiles.
In effect, China has removed the tarpaulin covers from its covert supply of arms. In the 1980s, it used to route armaments surreptitiously through Pakistan for use by Afghani rebels against the Soviets. Today, it is acknowledged as Pakistan’s largest known supplier of arms, with 47% of Chinese global arms exports marked for Pakistan.
Perhaps no largesse can symbolise the quality of China’s commitment – Small calls it the ‘ultimate gift from one state to another’ - than its Promethean transfer of nuclear technology to Pakistan. It began in 1965 when Pakistan, after a desultory war with India, realised that it could never compete with its adversary in conventional weaponry. Within thirty-three years, Pakistan was able to retort to Indian nuclear tests at Pokhran with six successful tests of its own at Chaghai. China feigned ‘deep regret’, but embraced the new polarity.
China’s concern is not the nuclearisation of South Asia. Its apprehension lies in the control of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. Small quotes a Chinese expert’s remark that while China is willing to help defend a Pakistani bomb, it will not ‘help them protect an Islamic bomb. If it’s under the control of a mullah, then everything changes.’
Until General Ziaul Haq’s coup in 1977, all of the Pakistani leaders China interacted with - whether elected or self-appointed - were western-trained, liberal-minded, soft-centre Muslims. It was only after the defeat of the Soviet that fundamentalism emerged as a militant credo, terrorism its weapon of selective destruction. Chairman Mao Zedong’s policy of ‘letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend’ had not foreseen the three spectres of extremism, splittism and terrorism, the divisive aims of the Uyghur insurrection, or the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Xinjiang. (How many of us know that Xinjiang occupies one sixth of China?)
Understandably, the Chinese have broadened their contacts with Saudi Arabia and in Pakistan with rightwing political parties such as the Jamaat Islami (JI) and the Jamiat-e-Ulema (JUI). They are hoping to set a Muslim rightist to catch a Muslim fundamentalist. The crucial challenge for China in its relations with Pakistan (Andrew Small anticipates) will be in ‘dealing with a country that is both the greatest source of China’s terrorist threat and the crucial partner in combating it’.
Andrew Small concludes his study with the observation that the one commodity Pakistan can offer China is friendship. Apart from geography, that is. And it is this fraternal bond that the Chinese now toll in the ringing phrase ‘Iron Brothers’.
Recently, President Xi Jiping has advised his countrymen ‘to keep pace with the changing circumstances and evolving times. One cannot live in the 21st century with the outdated thinking from the age of Cold War and zero-sum game.’ Andrew Small’s timely and brilliantly researched book provides his readership with the perfect means to keep pace with a rapidly changing China and a dyslexic Pakistan.
Published in ‘China and Pakistan: Iron Brothers’, The Political Quarterly, Volume 86, Issue 3 (July September 2015), pp.463-465. |
