New Delhi: China has stepped up efforts as a global peace broker with initiatives on a possible stop to the United States-Iran war and the Afghan-Pakistan armed conflict, even as Islamabad’s offer to host players involved in the West Asian theatre gains ground, raising questions over current relations between the “all-weather friends.”
It was perhaps not a coincidence that Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar rushed to Beijing two days after being diagnosed with a hairline fracture in the shoulder from slipping at an official engagement.
On the day he met China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Beijing announced a joint “five-point initiative for restoring peace and stability in the Gulf and Middle East region,” as reported by the state-controlled People’s Daily on Wednesday.
China has been watching with quiet unease, if not outright discomfort, as Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir extended Islamabad’s outreach to the United States.
Their high-profile meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House in June 2025 further increased Beijing’s uneasiness.
While it publicly insists that the “all-weather friendship” with Islamabad remains intact, behind closed doors, China’s strategists are calculating how far Pakistan can tilt toward Washington without undermining China’s privileged position in South Asia, according to reports.
“China remains Pakistan’s most critical partner, with whom it enjoys deep economic, strategic and military ties. But simultaneously, over the past three decades, Beijing’s rise as a global superpower has made it Washington’s principal rival,” warned an Al Jazeera report soon after the Sharif-Munir luncheon meeting with Trump.
It quoted Muhammad Faisal, a South Asia security researcher at the University of Technology in Sydney, saying that managing ties with both powers will test Islamabad’s commitment to a policy of “no-camp politics.”
Analysts noted that “Iran and the current crisis with Israel will force Pakistan into a diplomatic balancing act,” adding that “Islamabad’s close relations with China could similarly pull Pakistan in conflicting directions.”
The full-fledged attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel, which began a little over a month ago, were then a theory.
Other reports warned that tighter US-Pakistan ties expose Washington’s broader “wedge strategy” in South Asia, aimed at driving a wedge between Beijing and Islamabad.
Some argued that the Trump administration’s push for enhanced cooperation, from energy deals to potential intelligence sharing, could allow Washington to probe Chinese-supplied military systems in Pakistan and gain insights that many in Beijing see as sensitive.
This created uneasiness in China’s defence and foreign-policy circles, especially as rumours swirled about US pressure on Pakistan to limit or scrutinise Beijing’s military activities on its soil.
Additionally, the Pakistan-Afghanistan war was limiting China’s forays into the two countries through its Belt and Road Initiative projects.
Meanwhile, the Taliban government’s India outreach also raised Beijing’s concern, jeopardising its attempts at extending footprints in South Asia.
The recent establishment of democratically elected independent governments in Bangladesh and Nepal, along with a gradual shift to nonpartisan diplomacy in place of China’s intimacy, also ruffled feathers in Beijing.
The peace overtures come even as the United States holds China’s neutrality as selective, given Beijing’s close trade and security ties with Iran and Pakistan, its strategic rivalry with Washington, and its assertive actions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.
For Beijing, the question is not only if and when Pakistan will abandon it, but whether Islamabad may increasingly try to balance itself between the United States and China, a scenario the Dragon would hardly want in its neighbourhood.
(IANS)
