Pakistan’s alliance making with People’s Republic of China from 1990-2010: challenges and counter-measures

Abstract

This empirical research sets out to explore the complex domestic dynamics that shape Pakistan’s contemporary alliance making with China. The study examines the actual and potential domestic political challenges to the endurance of Pakistan-China alliance. The research also aims to assess Pakistani security elites’ efforts and strategies to overcome those challenges. The leading approaches in international politics that seek to explain the logic of external alliances – Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism – do not elucidate Pakistan-China alliance in depth. While there is an inordinate amount of literature concerning the Pakistan-China relations, the literature on maintenance of this alliance is relatively scarce. Besides, scholars have neglected the way in which Pakistan has promoted its alliance with China domestically. This work aims to fill this gap in the literature. Interpreting from the perspective of Security Elite Domestic Propaganda and International Alliance (SEPIA), this study will show that while the alliance with China is essential for Pakistan to contain the military threat posed by India, such an alliance meets with overt challenges from the Pakistani society. Specifically, the Pakistani popular support for Uighur separatism and terrorist attacks against Chinese targets confront the Pakistani security elites with the need to promote the alliance on the domestic level through a robust propaganda campaign. This study, therefore, evaluates the propaganda strategies of the security elites to cultivate the Chinese alliance within the national society. While exposing Pakistani state propaganda, the research focuses to highlight the apprehension of the Pakistani elite towards their public. This works relies on qualitative methods including documentary analysis and elites interviews. The sources used include Pakistani cultural textbooks, security elites’ newspaper articles and lawmakers’ speeches to investigate the key propaganda themes aiming to legitimising the alliance. The autobiographies and other sources held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are also utilised