Over a large geographical area at the western end of the Pakistani coast, the observer can clearly see the security walls and high walls encircling that area while construction workers continue to work in it in full swing, in addition to a large number of armed guards who provide high security protection, and the crowded scene is complete With towers, security fences and complexes that have been completed to add more protection to this mysterious patch, welcome to the Chinese naval base that is being secretly and discreetly constructed in Gwadar, the most important southwestern city of Pakistan.
The above was revealed to the world in the middle of last year 2020 through satellite images, and was like initial signals to build a long-awaited Chinese naval base on the coast of the Indian Ocean, signals that reinforced the persistent and escalating fears of Western countries that Beijing is working steadily to plant a solid root To strengthen its influence in the Indian Ocean, specifically on Pakistani soil, as the strategically located "Gwadar" base will give the Asian Dragon the ability to monitor the Strait of Hormuz, the area of operations of the American Third Fleet stationed in Bahrain, as well as the western command of the Indian Navy on the country's western coast. The base will act as a major port for the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where Gwadar will become an economic hub for trade and global economic activities related to the heart of the initiative in 2030.
However, China's establishment of a permanent naval presence on the Pakistani coast came as a result of the close strategic partnership between it and Islamabad, a partnership that came as a result of common hostility to India, as well as Pakistan's vitality as an important land corridor for trade and energy, and not far away is the current and future power struggle with Washington, The old ally of Pakistan, a conflict that may shape the features of the whole world in the next decade, and Sino-Pakistani relations may become an important part of the determinants of that conflict in Asia.
At the end of October 2020 in "Lahore", the second largest city in Pakistan, and while most of the world's population seeks - as much as possible - to avoid relying on crowded public transport due to the spread of the Coronavirus;
Almost 50 thousand passengers crammed into air-conditioned trains decorated with Chinese and Pakistani flags on the first day of the opening of the first metro line in the city, called the "Orange Line" project, which is considered one of the largest Pakistani transport projects ever, as it will transport a quarter of a million passengers a day, and it was established in The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework with a cost of $ 1.6 billion borrowed by the Pakistani government from China, whose companies implemented the project.
This project comes as a vivid example of the growing economic expansion of China on Pakistani soil. Over the past five years, Beijing has dramatically expanded its economic relations with the Islamic neighbor of India, and one of its most prominent projects there was the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, known for short as (CPEC). The pillars of the ambitious Chinese initiative to form new trade routes through Central and South Asia, at a total cost of $ 64 billion, as Chinese investments in the corridor improved Pakistani roads and ports, and addressed the country's energy crisis, in return for the corridor giving China access to the port of Gwadar in the south of the country. , Near the vital Strait of Hormuz, as we mentioned earlier.
Project "orange line"
Although an estimated 20% of the Belt and Road Initiative projects were "severely affected" by the emerging "Covid-19" virus, and also because of the targeting of Chinese work crews and engineers by Balochistan militants as part of their campaign against the Pakistani regime, both countries have demonstrated commitment Regarding the implementation of the projects of this corridor, they signed a number of agreements recently to implement vital projects, the most important of which was the approval of the largest Pakistani economic authority in August 2020 to implement the largest of these projects: the railway project known as the first mainline (Mainline-1), whose cost is Billions of dollars.
However, despite the fact that the close strategic partnership between the two countries is based on economic cooperation that began with the signing of the first formal agreement between them in 1963, based on the classic policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", military cooperation formed an important pillar between Beijing and Islamabad, cooperation that goes back to the insistence of the latter. First, in 1962, when Pakistani President Muhammad Ayub Khan realized that the United States was no longer a "reliable ally" after its support for India in the Sino-Indian war in the said year.
This military cooperation began when Beijing helped Islamabad at the time to build factories and supplied them with complete weapons systems, and then proceeded towards cooperation in "anti-terrorism" efforts and joint military exercises, until China became the main supplier of weapons and equipment to Pakistan in the past decade, occupying the former position of the United States, With full Chinese support for the Pakistani nuclear program, the share of Chinese weapons in the Pakistani army has increased from 13% to 63%, while the share of the United States has been almost nil in the past ten years.
In recent years, the growing relations between the two countries have also encouraged the wheel of Chinese arms supply and the joint manufacture of many military equipment to turn faster, including the JF-17 multi-purpose fighter aircraft, and the Pakistani missile program is the focus of China's first interest in the military machine of Islamabad, The recent arsenal of long-range missiles are direct copies of the Chinese "Nodong" and "Dong-Feng" ballistic missiles.
With a Chinese tank factory in Taxila, in the far northeast of Pakistan, it is also manufacturing and modernizing Chinese T-59 and T-69 tanks for the Pakistani forces;
China supplies to the Pakistan Air Force AEW & CS planes, F-22P destroyers known as "Zulfiqar" warships for the Pakistani Navy, which are destroyers based on Chinese designs of 053H3 destroyers, while providing the Pakistanis with air defense batteries, radar systems and others, making China at the heart of the Pakistani army with everything The word has meaning.
After nearly half a century passed since the last border dispute between them, and in mid-June 2020, Indo-Chinese military clashes occurred in an undefined mountainous border area in the strategically important Gallowan Valley, or what is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Sino-Indian relations have recently been increasingly tense, and Beijing has repeatedly accused New Delhi of showing aggression on the borders between them, threatening revenge, after India's abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status, and dividing it into two new regions within the united Indian territories. And China has silenced the Indian decision as "an illegal step to change the status of the disputed region."
The irony is that the motives of the aforementioned recent conflict differed from the usual causes of military tensions between the two countries, the last of which was the war that erupted in 1962, as behind this clash was mainly the broader strategic interests that include a third country, Pakistan, which is fighting Indian and Chinese soldiers a few hundred away. From the kilometers of the Line of Control that separates its territory from the lands it administers in the "Kashmir" region, in that Indo-Chinese confrontation and what preceded it in terms of confrontations, Pakistan had a main objective of simply deterring India as much as possible and undermining its power without appearing on the battlefield. Pakistan, which is aggressively seeking to develop its nuclear power and ally with New Delhi's enemies, still needs traditional tactics that fulfill the hopes of the Pakistani generals, who for decades have seen Sino-Indian tensions as a way to force India to engage in tension and possibly conflicts on two fronts instead of focusing solely on their front, especially. With their full knowledge, the flag of international powers, the great military power difference between the two neighbors and always tilted in favor of New Delhi.
To clarify the above, one can cite what the researcher Munesh Turangbam said that the Indo-Pakistani-Chinese triangle is defined by relative national strength and perceptions of mutual threat, which are complicated by the regional effects of the growing confrontation between Washington and Beijing, as Pakistan remains the most stable ally of China among India's neighbors, while India remains the only country in the region closest to competing with the growing Chinese influence. He adds in his analysis of Voices of South Asia: “The power asymmetry between India and Pakistan in favor of the former, and the growing power imbalance between India and China in favor of the latter, which will continue to reinforce the security dilemma inherent in the triangle. This justifies the existing Sino-Pakistani alliance to confront India's regional rise.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was quite frank when he came up with what contradicts his country's diplomatic norms, which have always promoted that the Americans are Pakistan's first and most important partners in promoting regional prosperity, when he said: “We are fortunate to have a friend who stood by our side in good times and bad. None of our other friends stood by our side as China supported us politically and defended us on all fronts. "
His words came last August, when he appeared in a local television interview talking about the recent developments in the region, most notably the assertion that his country will not comply with the pressures of normalization with Israel.
Khan appeared, then, apparently unconcerned with provoking his country's favorite former ally, clearly explaining the depth of the current US-Pakistani tensions, a trend due to the preponderance of relations with China during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, that war in which Washington took the Indian side and struck a wall. Imposed by the mutual defense agreement between Washington and Islamabad signed ten years earlier, in 1954, ignoring Pakistan's membership in the alliances that the Americans created to confront the Communist and Chinese influence, such as the Southeast Asia Treaty and the Central Treaty Organization (Baghdad Pact), and then came the invasion of Afghanistan to be an important station in a file Relations between Washington and Islamabad. With the start of this war, the United States granted the largest foreign financial and military aid to Islamabad as part of the broader effort to defeat the Taliban, and this aid quickly became the main point of contention over the viability of Americans staying in Afghanistan, as no trace of the money provided was touched. For Pakistan, in order to achieve a victory for the Americans, or at least stop their huge loss on Afghan soil.
In the end, the Pakistani-Chinese rapprochement constituted a great provocation to the Americans, who did not miss an opportunity to show their reservations about the majority of the manifestations of Chinese influence on Pakistani soil. At times, Washington asserts that investments related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and others, allow Chinese companies to reap most of the economic benefits in exchange for leaving Pakistan to fall. In the "debt trap", and at other times you see the fiber-optic cables and communication devices that China brings to Pakistan as opportunities to gain Beijing more control over the domestic Pakistani data, impose more effective control over and monitor communications there, and "undermine freedoms" as it calls it, as Washington occupies What Chinese assistance to Pakistan can do to change the balance against India in any future conflict, and looks at the geopolitical capabilities that Pakistan provides to China with regard to the regional projection of Chinese military force on that region.
In any case, the Americans can keep a glimmer of hope that the growing Chinese influence in Pakistan may be restricted or diminished at any time, because China - as the Pakistanis themselves realize - does not support anyone without restriction, and over-reliance on it as an external partner threatens Pakistani territorial sovereignty intuitively As evidenced by the fact that Beijing in September 2017 did not hesitate to join India in signing the declaration of "fighting terrorism" for the BRICS summit, which included specific references to armed groups based in Pakistan such as "Lashkar-e-Taiba", and also when it surrendered in April of the year On the Pakistani side, Beijing cannot rely on a close relationship with Islamabad, which is known for its usual mood swinging paramilitary regimes. Pakistan, which China wants, is a pathway in its grand strategy and a more stable ally for it with an excellent geopolitical location next to it. India;
This Pakistan is a volatile and fluctuating country in terms of its foreign relations, and it can return to the American home at any moment if Washington presents its papers as it used to in the past, so the Chinese and Pakistanis can continue the current warm rapprochement, but it is a convergence that probably has no long-term validity. Something that people in Beijing and Islamabad know, and in New Delhi too, without any doubt.