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Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from office in a vote of no confidence in the country’s parliament on Sunday, but such a major political upheaval in Islamabad will have no impact on the strong friendship between China and Pakistan. Pakistan’s parliament elected Shehbaz Sharif as the new Prime Minister, to improve relations with the United States.
Imran Khan, the previous prime minister, said it was a coup d’etat organized by the United States. Lawmakers won 174 of the 172 votes needed to remove Imran Khan. Pakistan’s security services banned officials from leaving the country. Imran Khan had no intention of leaving the country and insisted that the U.S.-initiated coup would be doomed to failure.
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The allied and cordial relationship between official Islamabad and Washington deteriorated under the Donald Trump administration, and especially later when Joe Biden took office. The White House chief bet on India as part of the anti-China QUAD bloc, and military aid to Pakistan, which amounted to $1.3 billion a year, was frozen. Islamabad began to increase interaction with Moscow and Beijing. China was allowed to develop projects in Afghanistan in the Taliban-controlled areas. And Khan himself visited Moscow in late February, where he concluded major infrastructure agreements linking Pakistan’s market to Central Asia.
The current coup is not only an attempt by the White House to punish the prime minister for his cooperation with Russia but also to deprive China of a significant partner. This intervention ended up hitting the Pakistani economy even harder – the rupee has fallen 10 times against the dollar in a month.
Nevertheless, during a meeting with the chargé d’affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, Pakistani Prime Minister-elect Shahbaz Sharif said that the new government attaches great importance to relations with China and will promote the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor with even more energy and efficiency.
“China appreciates what Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said,” Zhao Lijian commented to the new prime minister at a press briefing.
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Chinese and Pakistani analysts believe that strong Sino-Pakistani relations will not be affected by internal political changes in Pakistan, because maintaining and developing bilateral ties is a joint consensus of all parties and all groups in Pakistan.
Although the U.S. has always tried to provoke or create problems for China-Pakistan ties, especially targeting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project and China’s proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China need not worry, experts said.
Pakistan’s current internal political struggle has been caused by economic problems caused mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic, while CPEC and BRI, as well as Sino-Pakistani cooperation in other areas, including counterterrorism and the fight against coronavirus, are essential for Pakistan to overcome its current problems. This means that China is the most reliable, trustworthy, powerful, and indispensable partner for the country.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a routine press conference on Wednesday when asked about the current political situation in Pakistan that “China follows the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners. History has proven time and again that Sino-Pakistani relations have always been unbreakable and enduring, no matter how the international landscape and their respective domestic situations may change.”
According to Zhao Lijian, China looks forward to working with the new government of Pakistan to promote contacts at all levels, enrich and expand practical cooperation, build the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, strive for high standards, sustainability, and benefits for the people, to accelerate the building of a closer China-Pakistan community of common destiny in the new era and bring even greater benefits to both countries and their peoples. China will continue to prioritize Pakistan in its diplomacy with neighboring countries and will firmly support Pakistan on the road to rising and prosperity.
India fears a Russia-Pakistan-China alliance if India refuses to cooperate with the actors, but India needs to maintain its niche in relations with Russia anyway.
Russia also reacted to the change of the prime minister in Pakistan. Russia, on the other hand, counts on the continuation of the construction of the Pakistan Stream gas pipeline. Moscow hopes for the continuation of the Pakistan Stream gas pipeline project under Pakistan’s new government, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
“We expect that under the new Pakistan’s government, work on this project will continue,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.
There is no way to say that the change of the prime minister will lead to a rebalancing of forces in the region, as there is no confirmation of ties between Shahbaz Sharif and the United States, moreover, there is a trend of deterioration in relations with John Biden’s accession to power. Regarding China, the political course will remain as it has always been since China acts as one of the counterbalances between India and Pakistan, and cooperation with China is extremely beneficial for Pakistan.
