The role of China in the latest round of skirmishes between India and Pakistan has once again revived the debate in the strategic circles about whether Beijing will be an active participant in future Indo-Pak conflicts.
The question being raised is whether India should be prepared for a “two-front challenge” from China and Pakistan simultaneously.
But then, the fact is that India has always faced this challenge in all the wars imposed on it by Pakistan. In that sense, it is not exactly a new challenge.
After all, the concept of a two-front challenge has broadly two dimensions or levels. It could be what experts call “collaborative” or “collusive”.
In the “collaborative” front, one country openly aids the other militarily in a coordinated manner; they fight jointly either at one front or at different fronts separately, forcing the enemy to divide its resources and attention.
In the case of the “collusive front”, one country aids the other morally, politically, and militarily through material and logistical support, either openly or covertly.
Of course, the two are not exclusive, as transitioning from the collusive threat to the collaborative threat could occur seamlessly. But so far, China seems to have followed the collusive approach, if the history of various Indo-Pak conflicts is any indication.
When one is talking of China, it is the People’s Republic of China, led by the communists, that was established on October 1, 1949. So, one may overlook Beijing’s role in the first Indo-Pak war in 1947-48. That was the time when China was embroiled in the civil war between the “nationalists” and the communists.
The second Indo-Pak war began on August 5, 1965. It ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire on September 23, 1965, with the active involvement of both the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR).
Of course, Pakistan continued violating this ceasefire even later, and it accused India of doing the same, but things did not go beyond control. In January 1966, the two countries signed the “Tashkent” declaration, brokered by the USSR, to resolve the war and improve bilateral relations.
A few facts are notable regarding the Chinese role in this war. India and China fought a war in 1962, three years before the India-Pakistan war of 1965. Following that, China’s relations with Pakistan turned northward. On March 2, 1963, the two signed an agreement in Beijing, with Islamabad graciously ceding a portion of Indian territory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) to China.
This area, known as the Shaksgam Valley or Trans-Karakoram Tract, was roughly 5,180 square kilometers. India does not recognize this agreement and claims sovereignty over the ceded territory. Since then, China has linked up the old Silk Route Highway, which runs from Sinkiang to Gilgit in close proximity to the northern region of Ladakh.
In fact, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), particularly the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), passes through this region, which India considers as its territory but under illegal Sino-Pak control.
Therefore, during the 1965 India-Pakistan War, China adopted a strong support for Pakistan. It even issued verbal threats to enter the war if Indian troops did not cease their activities on the front of Sikkim (then India’s protectorate country; it joined India to become a full-fledged state on May 16, 1975).
This was said to have constrained India to retain five of its seven mountain divisions on its northern borders. Even the other two divisions were kept only in reserve and were not put on the frontline against Pakistan until the ceasefire was signed.
However, all said and done, China did not participate in the war, limiting itself to providing only moral and political backing to Pakistan.
The third Indo-Pakistan war began on December 3, 1971, and ended on December 16, 1971, with the surrender of Pakistani forces to India in Dhaka. But then, in the movement for Bangladesh since the beginning of the year, and the consequent brutal suppression by the Pakistani troops in what was then its eastern wing, had resulted in thousands of Bengali refugees migrating into India.
The Indian Army crossed the international border into East Pakistan only after being attacked by Pakistan in the Western sector. Still, before that, it was an open secret that India had provided training, resources, and weapons to the Bangladeshi freedom fighters.
By then, China’s relations with Pakistan had been cemented further, with Islamabad playing a role in organising the historic trip by late Henry Kissinger, then U.S. Secretary of State, to Beijing, leading to the Sino-American entente.
Simultaneously, Beijing’s relations with Moscow worsened like never before. Besides, India and the USSR concluded “the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation” on August 9, 1971, much to Beijing’s anguish.
It is against this background that in April 1971, Chinese Premier Chou En Lai sent a letter to Pakistani rulers. Among others, it said that East and West Pakistan was one of the “basic guarantees” for the construction of Pakistani prosperity, that the separatist movement in East Pakistan was a “handful movement” that desired to sabotage Pakistani unification, that “broad masses of the people” had no leaning whatsoever in the direction of separatism, and that India, along with Russia, were guilty of “gross interference” and exploitation of Pakistan’s internal affairs.
Most importantly, Chou assured China’s total support to Pakistan in the event that the “State and sovereignty and national independence” of Pakistan was threatened “by the aggression of the Indian expansionists.”
However, China did not intervene militarily during the War in 1971, limiting itself again to providing Pakistan weapons and equipment and allowing Pakistan Air Force flights eastwards to overfly from its territory.
Besides, it is said that during the last days of the war in East Pakistan, Chinese rescue ships were assembled in the Ganga Delta for the evacuation of the Pakistani army in East Pakistan.
In other words, the Chinese armada was in the Bay of Bengal during the War. Apparently, Moscow had advised Delhi not to attack the Chinese ships, given the possibility of their presence only for the evacuation of the Pakistanis from what was to become Bangladesh.
Incidentally, on December 16, 1971, China gave its final statement in support of Pakistan when Pakistani forces surrendered, stating:
“The Soviet Government has played a shameful role in the war of aggression launched by India against Pakistan. The whole world has clearly seen that it is the backstage manager of the Indian expansionists. For many years, the Soviet Government has energetically been fostering the Indian reactionaries and abetting India in its outward expansion.
“The separation of East Pakistan is an event which marked the commencement of endless strife on the Subcontinent and the beginning of India’s ultimate defeat”.
Be that as it may, there were independent reports that said that in 1971, the “PRC had dispatched 200 military instructors to Pakistan for the purpose of the training of Pakistani troops for guerrilla warfare.”
Besides, in the final week of the Indo-Pak War, “China supplied 200,000 rounds of anti-aircraft and tank ammunition for Pakistan.”
Some studies estimated that the free Chinese arms assistance for Pakistan in 1971-72 consisted of 225 T-59 tanks, one squadron of II-28 bombers, and four squadrons of MIG-19 interceptors, along with “an unspecified number of river boats and coasters and Chinese assistance in the construction of two major ordnance factories.”
But the point to note is that China did not opt for direct military intervention and did not carry out the threat of direct involvement that Chou had made in his letter in April in the eventuality of a challenge to Pakistan’s sovereignty and integrity.
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During the Kargil War (semi-war?) in 1999, China was arguably “neutral,” if compared to its utterances in 1965 and 1971. One of the most plausible reasons, it is said, was the presence of battle-hardened Uyghurs along with the Pakistani intruders in the Kargil hills.
China had protested to Pakistan for aiding the Islamic fundamentalist rebels in its Muslim-majority regions of Xinjiang and Ningxia Hui. Besides, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Muslim fundamentalism was on the increase not only in Central Asia but also in Pakistan, including its occupied areas of Kashmir that China had taken over in 1963. China was for combating this Islamic “jihadi influence”.
The only concrete military support that China provided to Pakistan during the Kargil war was its permission for Pakistani Air Force flights to overfly its territory. But China insisted on the pullout of both Indian and Pakistani forces to pre-conflict positions along the Line of Control (LOC) and the peaceful settlement of border issues. It appealed to both India and Pakistan to show restraint.
Similarly, if one separates the Chinese social media and pro-China analysts (actually, they are more anti-India than pro-China), the official Chinese reaction during the latest four-day conflict (May 7-10) that India has named “Operation Sindoor” has been the same circumspection.
Beijing described the Indian strikes on Pakistan’s terrorist centres as “regrettable” and called on India and Pakistan to avoid worsening the situation and to “remain calm and exercise restraint”.
In China’s official reactions, one did not witness the language that one usually witnesses in issues pertaining to the Taiwan Straits and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
But then, China is a master in information warfare. While projecting itself as a responsible global power advising peace and stability, it reveals its inner intentions through bloggers and experts in all forms of media, including social media. And if one goes by the latter, the Chinese reactions to the Indian actions have been really nasty and brutish.
The Chinese have declared Pakistan the clear victor, thanks to the weapons it has supplied to Islamabad in recent years, particularly the J-10C aircraft to launch air-to-air missiles against Indian fighter jets.
It may be noted that China has, apparently, sold Pakistan $8.2 billion in arms since 2015. China was the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter from 2020-24, and Pakistan was China’s top customer. Islamabad consumed 63% – nearly two-thirds – of Chinese weapon sales in that period.
If anything, all the above examples prove that China has remained a “collusive” partner of Pakistan in the “two-front” challenges to India.
There seems to be only a remote possibility of any transition from this situation to a “collaborative one”, given China’s global competition to be recognized as a benevolent superpower and its reluctance to join a two-front war against India that could be incredibly prohibitive and strategically vulnerable to the exchange of nuclear weapons.
All told, despite the tall claims that “Pakistan-China friendship is higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the ocean,” China has not yet chosen Pakistan for a formal military pact like a mutual defense treaty, something the United States has done with many.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
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