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asia policy doing more, but keeping the relationship with Pakistan in decent working order is a higher-order objective for Beijing than any of these individual goals. In addition, even when there are aspects of discomfort, Pakistan gains far more from having its closest partner as the rising heavyweight power in the region than from any plausible alternative. The presence of a $46 billion carrot helps too. China is laying out—all at once—the package of benefits that can accrue to Pakistan if it is able to ensure a domestic and international situation that is sufficiently stable to make the investments possible. There is some degree of political consensus in Pakistan that this opportunity should be seized, despite concerns about whether the country has the capacity to do so quite as quickly as China would like. But if there are problems with specific projects, or the conditions for the investment do not obtain, the initiative will simply be scaled down. Either way, many of the principal beneficiaries of the supposed largesse will be Chinese companies. As risks go, CPEC is not especially egregious. The greater challenge may actually be if a substantial proportion of the project moves forward. China’s standing in Pakistan, which includes persistently stratospheric ratings in opinion polls, has partly reflected its remove from everyday politics. Now Beijing is embroiled in battles over corridor routes, debates about the social impact of its investments, and criticism over the entrenchment of Punjabi economic privilege—all of this even before a new wave of Chinese workers arrives in Pakistan. The fact that economic ties had been limited to a weak set of trade links and a few grand projects meant that the more quotidian aspects of the relationship were kept to a minimum. My bet is that a great deal more will come out of CPEC than the most skeptical views suggest, which will make for a more balanced relationship but also one that is increasingly demythologized. The final question is how to define the relationship. Khan understandably reacts against the connotations of the term “axis” in the title, but his analysis demonstrates the challenge of finding a more appropriate term for a partnership that is palpably more than just a “friendship” or “entente cordiale,” yet lacks the obligations of a formal alliance. Scobell describes the use of axis as “controversial” but “appropriate,” and Bruce Riedel’s elegant formulation in a review elsewhere—that, alongside the U.S.-India relationship, this will be one of the “dual axes…central to the global order in our times”—frames the term in the neutral sense in which [ 172 ]
ook review roundtable • the china-pakistan axis it was intended. 1 This debate about terminology is not an idle one. While Pakistan is a unique case in Chinese foreign policy, the coming years are likely to see China developing more relationships that resist ready classification: partnerships with a heavy security component and attendant political expectations but without mutual defense obligations. I have been struck in the last year by references in Chinese sources to the China-Pakistan relationship being a “model to follow.” 2 That will be difficult. But this view is another indication that this oddly resilient friendship, whose descent into acrimony or irrelevance has been consistently predicted, remains in surprisingly good health. I will conclude by adding that I am very grateful to the reviewers for their kind comments and thoughtful analysis. For all the growing interest in the China-Pakistan relationship, material on it remains relatively thin, and their essays are an important contribution to correcting that deficit. 1 Bruce Riedel, “‘The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics,’ by Andrew Small,” Lawfare, February 25, 2015 u https://www.lawfareblog.com/china-pakistan-axis-asias-new-geopolitics-andrew-small. 2 See, for example, Liu Zongyi, “China Remains Faithful Partner of Pakistan,” Global Times, December 28, 2015 u http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/960904.shtml; and Yan Xuetong, “China- U.S. Competition for Strategic Partners,” China-U.S. Focus, October 29, 2015 u http://www. chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/china-u-s-competition-for-strategic-partners. [ 173 ]
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