Bonds and roads

Pakistan and China celebrated seventy-five years of diplomatic ties two days ago. The Prime Minister of Pakistan's four-day visit to China begins today. It recalls another milestone. In 1986, the Karakoram Highway was opened to the public. Preliminary work began in 1959. A formal Sino-Pakistani agreement was signed in 1966, after which Chinese engineers and labour joined the project, and it was completed by the end of the 1970s. By the time it opened to the public, two decades of labour and love had gone into it.

To mark it, PTV and CCTV co-produced a television drama called Rishtay aur Raastay (Bonds and Roads). Written by the late Taj Haider, it is a story about three generations of work to build the KKH and the relationship between Pakistan and China. I recall the ten-year-old me glued to the screen, drinking in every word, every scene. The opening tribute to the men who died building the road has stayed with me.

Forty years on, this middle-aged man takes special pride in a relationship that has only gone from strength to strength. I want to name the Pakistani leaders who built it. I say Pakistani because the Chinese have kept their record. We have not.

On our side, the record has been blurred by political expediency. Most accounts begin with the 1963 Boundary Agreement, because Bhutto signed it as foreign minister and Ayub Khan was president. But the foundations were laid earlier.

Pakistan recognised the People's Republic on 4 January 1950, within months of its creation. The two sides set up formal ties on 21 May 1951, the date marked two days ago.

In April 1955, at Bandung, Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Bogra held two meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai and assured him that Pakistan's alliances were not directed against China. Bogra mattered because he was Pakistan's man in Washington both before and after his premiership, and the architect of Pakistan's entry into SEATO. That such a figure carried the assurance to Zhou tells you the China policy was not the project of one faction. It was already a settled bipartisan instinct. Bogra also publicly backed China's UN seat at a Karachi press conference.

In October 1956, Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy became the first Pakistani prime minister to visit China. In December 1956, Premier Zhou Enlai paid his first visit to Pakistan.

After the 1962 Sino-Indian war, the two sides drew closer. Border talks began that October. On 2 March 1963, the Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement was signed in Peking by Foreign Ministers Chen Yi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, with Premier Zhou Enlai present. This was the first formal border settlement either country reached with a neighbour.

1964 was a year of settling. PIA began flights to Beijing as the first non-communist airline to do so, Zhou Enlai visited again in February, and Ayub Khan went to China in December.

In the 1965 war, China openly backed Pakistan, warned India on the Sikkim border, and supplied arms. This is when public goodwill towards China in Pakistan was set. In 1966, an agreement was signed for the joint construction of the Karakoram Highway, and work began soon after.

In August 1969, Nixon met Yahya Khan and asked Pakistan to convey Washington's wish to open contacts with Beijing. Two years of back-channel diplomacy followed. From 8 to 11 July 1971, Henry Kissinger was flown secretly from near Islamabad to Beijing on a Pakistani aircraft, met Zhou Enlai for forty-eight hours, and returned. Nixon's visit to China followed in February 1972.

On 25 October 1971, the People's Republic took China's seat at the UN under Resolution 2758, after years of sustained Pakistani support.

Bhutto visited Beijing in 1972, and again in 1976, meeting Mao in one of his last receptions of a foreign leader before his death later that year.

In 1986, the KKH opened to the public, and a civil nuclear cooperation agreement was signed, the basis for the Chashma projects.

In 1995, Benazir Bhutto attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In December 1996, Jiang Zemin paid a state visit to Pakistan and set out China's South Asia policy.

In 1999, the two sides signed the JF-17 contract, building on a 1995 framework. Premier Zhu Rongji visited in May 2001 to mark fifty years of ties. Gwadar Port broke ground in March 2002 with Chinese finance and engineers.

On 5 April 2005, Shaukat Aziz and Wen Jiabao signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good-Neighbourly Relations, the first such treaty China had signed with any country. Hu Jintao paid a state visit in November 2006, and the Free Trade Agreement was signed during it.

In 2010, the JF-17 Thunder entered PAF frontline service. In February 2013, Gwadar Port was handed to China Overseas Port Holding Company. In May, Premier Li Keqiang visited Pakistan and proposed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. In July, Nawaz Sharif visited China and signed the CPEC MoU.

President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan on 20 and 21 April 2015. Fifty-one agreements worth about forty-six billion dollars were signed, formally launching CPEC. Xi was awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif attended the first Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.

In 2018, Pakistan Remote Sensing Satellite-1 was launched from Jiuquan. Imran Khan made his first state visit to China in November, and CPEC entered its second phase. Arif Alvi visited Beijing in March 2020, an early gesture of solidarity during Covid.

Shehbaz Sharif visited Beijing in November 2022, again in June 2024 after starting his second term, and attended the SCO summit in Tianjin in September 2025.

Today the Pakistani labour of love stands vindicated. One of the two young states that found each other seventy-five years ago has arrived to call on the other. Our closest friend, our pride, is the talk of the town. How does one even begin to thank every leader, every office bearer, every citizen who contributed to this relationship?

But decades later, Bogra's mission is not over. Last year, during my visit to Shanghai, I noticed Indian rumour mills working overtime trying to sow seeds of division. Too bad for India's propaganda that our Chinese peers are among the smartest in the world. This relationship will keep moving from strength to strength.

I have argued recently that two forces are shaping human destiny today. AI and China. Any nation that gets its facts on AI and China right, and aligns its policy with those facts, gets the key to the future. Ten years ago I would have added India to the list, but I am not sure any longer.

This week I was faced with a choice, whether to write on AI and tech displacement or on China. China is the easiest answer. If life permits, I may discuss AI-related issues next week.