Top Games's video: Is India is afraid of Pakistan and China

The countries describe their friendship as being ‘higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, sweeter than honey’. To this, CPEC might well add, ‘stronger than steel’. It’s a relationship that has endured nearly 7 decades of changes in geopolitical and strategic interests. It’s a layered, complex story — in which considerations about India have often played a dominant role. Pakistan-China is the only bilateral relationship, other than with Saudi Arabia perhaps, in which Pakistan is happy to play the junior partner. Islamabad, which is wont to cast ties with China emotionally, describes the friendship as one that has no parallel in the world. “Higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans” is the usual description for it from both sides — but how they have built this “all-weather” (and all terrain) relationship is a layered story of several highs and lows. And through all of it, India has been the dominant theme. Pakistan was among the earliest non-communist countries (India was the first) to recognise the People’s Republic of China. But while the two established diplomatic relations in 1951, Pakistan’s eager membership of the two United States-led anti-communist military pacts, SEATO and CENTO, soon afterward, was not the perfect starting point for their relationship in the same decade in which India and China celebrated Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai. China, on the other hand, provides Pakistan the security of constant backing by a big power, while Islamabad acts as its unquestioning ally at a strategic crossroads of Asia. Indeed the idea of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) — India’s primary objection to China’s staggeringly ambitious Belt and Road Initiative — did not come about overnight. The first bit of brickwork was perhaps laid by the Sino-Pak agreement of 1963, under which China ceded 1,942 sq km to Pakistan, and Pakistan recognised Chinese sovereignty over thousands of square kilometres in northern Kashmir and Ladakh. India contests the agreement, which includes land that is part of Jammu & Kashmir. Possibly the first person to articulate the idea of a “trade and energy corridor” from Gwadar overland into China, was Musharraf. The Pakistan-China relationship, he was arguing, should be about more than simply providing an easy market for Chinese goods. At the time, China was sinking money in Gwadar port, but many dismissed much greater Chinese involvement in Pakistan’s economy (other than in defence production) as a pie in the sky because of Pakistan’s security situation. The CPEC, with its energy, finance, information technology and communications components, along with security and political dimensions, is an upgrade many times over of that basic idea of Pakistan offering its strategic location in exchange for investment. Pakistan’s great moment in international diplomacy came when it facilitated Henry Kissinger’s secret ice-breaking visit to China in 1971, laying the ground for a visit by President Richard Nixon the following year. It went on to also act as the bridge between China and the Arab world, starting with Saudi Arabia.