Before CPEC: When China and Pakistan Aligned Against India
Pakistan’s Ayub Khan in Beijing with Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, 1965
(Author’s note: the following post draws on research done for my forthcoming book on China and India in the early Cold War as well as the writing of other scholars on China and South Asia, notably Rudra Chaudhuri and Manjari Chatterjee-Miller. Do reach out if you are interested in discussing any aspect of this, including sources used)
The recent open conflict between India and Pakistan, following the April 22, 2025 terrorist killings of Indian tourists at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, has prompted much discussion of China’s ‘All Weather’ friendship with Pakistan, and the India-China-Pakistan triangle generally. This relationship, encompassing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and cooperation in fields from defence to culture, is a well-recognised feature of 21st century Asian politics. However, it is less well-known that this intimacy is rooted in the major realignment of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) posture in South Asia between 1959-1962. In 1959, Pakistan had startled India by proposing a joint defence pact following the massive disruption to Sino-Indian relations caused by the Dalai Lama’s escape to India that Spring. Offer rejected, Pakistan and China opportunistically came together, eventually concluding a border agreement in 1963. They grew so close that, in October 1962, on the very eve of the PLA’s decisive strike against Delhi’s forces strung out along the massive and disputed Sino-Indian border, the Pakistani Foreign Secretary urged China to deal a ‘sharp blow’ and launch ‘long term struggle to wear India down’.
Pakistan and India faced similar diplomatic challenges after the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) founding of the PRC in 1949. These were often to do with the sensitivities of post-colonial state-building and suspicions of communism. In concrete terms, Beijing was dubious of the influence of Indian and Pakistani officials over ethnic minority populations in areas like Xinjiang where local loyalty to the new Chinese state was tenuous. Such doubts merged with communist Chinese paranoia, not always unjustified, about foreign spies and subversion. That Indian and Pakistani traders owned property and were landlords in an area like southern Xinjiang was also problematic. Simultaneously, South Asian governments were extremely wary of the new, revolutionary Chinese state fostering ties with local communists on the subcontinent. Nonetheless, like India, Pakistan recognised the PRC and established diplomatic relations with it; although Delhi was readier to do so, and pursued a far more ambitious policy of engagement with China.
Subsequently, through the middle of the 1950s, India and China grew closer and one thing upon which they agreed was that Pakistan was becoming a disruptive force in international relations. In 1953-54, both were perturbed by the emergence of Pakistan’s military pact with the US and moves towards designating itself an ‘Islamic Republic’. This was compounded as Pakistan became a member of western military groupings like the South East Asia Treaty Organisation and the Baghdad Pact. India and Pakistan’s contrasting views of China were also clear. In 1954, Delhi lobbied for the PRC to join the Bandung Conference of Asian and African countries in Indonesia (April 1955), while Pakistan favoured the CPC’s defeated enemy, the Nationalist Chinese (Guomindang), on Taiwan. Pakistan had also stopped voting in favour of the PRC at the annual UN debate over Chinese membership of that body.
However, the balance of this triangular structure was gently shifting against India. For instance, despite earlier misgivings, Pakistan told the Chinese in February 1955, in the lead up to Bandung, that they wanted closer relations. Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai’s, general approach at Bandung was to seek common ground with all. And in bilateral talks there he was assured that Pakistan would never attack China and that it had joined any military pacts only from fear of India. In 1956, the PRC and Pakistan agreed a Treaty of Friendship and government leaders exchanged visits. By 1958, it was Beijing which wanted to preserve Pakistan’s place in the wider Asian African movement and supported calls for a second Bandung Conference. India, however, opposed any repetition of Bandung, preferring to encourage a narrower group of states committed to nonalignment.
As tensions began emerging between China and India, Delhi was unable to take a chance to arrest progress in Sino-Pakistani relations. Beijing believed that the US was trying to orchestrate major improvements in India-Pakistan relations, partly to serve its aim of wrecking Beijing and Delhi’s apparent friendship. But Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, remained profoundly sceptical of Pakistan, which he viewed as a coup-ridden disruptor of international affairs. In March 1959, the Tibet rebellion and Dalai Lama’s escape to India rocked relations with Beijing. General Ayub Khan, who had recently seized power in Pakistan, promptly reacted by opportunistically, and rather surprisingly, proposing a joint defence pact. But Delhi dismissed this outright.
It was at this point in history that Beijing first used the Pakistan factor to threaten Delhi, if subtly. Chairman Mao was no doubt baffled by Nehru’s rejection of Khan’s proposal, given India was facing a newly antagonistic relationship with China. But Mao was happy to take advantage. He personally crafted a friendly note to Delhi asking, rhetorically, whether the Indians did not want to avoid a situation of conflict on two fronts? But despite this warning, and Beijing’s sense that the US continued to promote the idea of an Indian-Pakistani rapprochement, Delhi would not countenance anything like a formal alliance to mitigate its regional isolation.
Delhi’s inflexibility created the opportunity for Pakistan and the PRC to cooperate more closely. One leading Indian diplomat has recorded that it was from late 1959 that China began using Pakistan against India, for instance, cooperating to arm separatist groups amongst the Naga tribes of India’s Northeast. And in 1960 Pakistan helped the radical Naga leader, Phizo, escape to the UK. Internal discussions in China’s Foreign Ministry showed Beijing was increasingly clear that it must exploit Indian contradictions with Pakistan to increase Delhi’s ‘isolation’ amongst Asian and African states.
The starkest indication of the breakthrough in Sino-Pakistan relations was the border issue. In 1959, Ayub Khan’s concerns about Chinese claims on Pakistani territory were ignored by Beijing. However, in 1961, China said that if Pakistan resumed its earlier support on the question of the PRC’s admission to the UN, then border negotiations could be held. Pakistan responded positively and in March 1962 they agreed to schedule talks, despite Indian disquiet that this would impact the Kashmir issue. Unable to amicably settle its own border issues with Beijing, by May 1962 Delhi was very concerned that Pakistan and China were coordinating to increase the pressure on India.
The 1962 Sino-Indian war and its fall-out showed how far China and Pakistan viewed India similarly and further advanced their mutual trust. Throughout the Summer, mutual suspicion, paranoia even, grew across the extended Sino-Indian border areas. Despite some efforts to halt that trend, in October, Beijing decided to settle matters militarily. Pakistan and China had already begun their border talks earlier in the month and, as seen above, Pakistan enthusiastically encouraged China to give India a beating. In the aftermath of India’s defeat, the United States and UK tried again to press New Delhi into a joint defence agreement with Pakistan. The US made further, much-needed arms supplies to India conditional on it sitting down for talks with Pakistan over Kashmir. But when Delhi realised Pakistan and China were making their own deal, any remote hope of India and Pakistan making progress was lost. Beijing used the agreement with Pakistan, confirmed in March 1963, and similar deals with Nepal and Burma, to signal to the wider world that the PRC was a fair partner and could make territorial concessions, thus challenging New Delhi’s claim that China was hostile and expansionist. The agreement laid the basis for close Sino-Pakistani relations in subsequent decades but by ceding parts of Indian-claimed Kashmir to China it further compounded an already intractable territorial dispute.
It is true, as some scholars have argued, that talk of the ‘All Weather Friendship’ of China and Pakistan has become most prominent in the last 10-15 years. Indeed, the India-Pakistan wars in 1971 and 1999 did not see Beijing get involved. But we should not ignore the substantive history of this close relationship which goes back to the 1950s and 60s. The border agreement of 1963 laid the basis for events in 1965. During that year’s India-Pakistan war, Beijing’s crucial threat of intervention led the US and India to seek a quick resolution of the conflict. And following that war close defence cooperation began. Furthermore, economic and indeed nuclear support for Pakistan has been substantial and in line with the ‘All Weather’ framing. But the foundation for the PRC’s unique partnership with Pakistan was the transformative years of 1959-1962 when the post-colonial partnership between the two Asian colossi, China and India, was sundered. Pakistan and China each responded deftly to create a partnership which has immense value to both today and remains a major headache for New Delhi.
Further reading:
Chaudhuri, R. (2017). The Making of an ‘All Weather Friendship’ Pakistan, China and the History of a Border Agreement: 1949–1963. INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW, 1-24.
Chatterjee-Miller, M (2022). How China and Pakistan forged close ties. Council of Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/article/how-china-and-pakistan-forged-close-ties