Why India Needs To Worry About The China-Pakistan Love Affair!

China’s embrace of Pakistan unsettles its relationship with India and heightens strategic tension in the region.

- Ananth Krishnan

Chun chi xiang yi”, or “as close as lips and teeth”, was how Mao Zedong once described China’s close relationship with North Korea. For decades, the North was China’s only ally, but in Beijing today, there is a new epithet that is currently flavour of the moment for China’s mandarins: “Ba tie”, or “iron brother Pakistan”.

In recent months, India has been alarmed by the extent to which China has once again begun deferring to Pakistan’s interests on key bilateral issues, potentially reversing a two decade trend that saw Beijing attempt to strike a balance between its historical ties with Islamabad on the one hand, and a sensitive but growing relationship with Delhi on the other.

With India-Pakistan tensions running high after the Uri attacks and India mounting a robust multi pronged response by carrying out surgical strikes across the Line of Control and isolating Pakistan diplomatically, the extent of China’s embrace of India’s troublesome neighbour may determine whether India’s efforts succeed or fail.

Indeed, the Pakistan factor is looming large as Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Goa on October 15, 2016 at the BRICS Summit, where both sides are confronting a starkly different meeting from Xi’s last visit to India in September 2014, when the PM hosted him warmly in Gujarat.

MODI’S XI CHALLENGE