Context
According to media reports, Pakistan’s immediate response to allegations by Beijing that Islamic radicals behind violence in Xinjiang were trained on its territory shows the significance of its relations with China. Pakistan quickly sent ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha to Beijing after militants carried out a weekend assault that killed 11 people in western China. However, some analysts claim depending too much on China could be counterproductive for Islamabad.
According to Indian analysts, US rarely gets this kind of response when it pushes Pakistan on militant groups operating on its border. These experts believe Islamabad’s attempts to prefer China too much over the US will backfire ultimately. This is because Pakistan’s usefulness for Beijing is in South Asia only, where it is competing with India. However, China also has global ambitions that it is unlikely to sacrifice for a country that has proven a headache to the US.
