Pakistan’s Foreign Policy towards China: (A Case Study 2013-2022)

Abstract

This thesis is a comparative study of the foreign policy of Pakistan to China under the governments of Nawaz Sharif (2013-2018) and Imran Khan (2018-2022). Although the relations between Pakistan and China are commonly referred to as an all-weather partnering, the shift in politics under the change of leadership in the countries led to significant variations in focus, manner of doing, and execution. The study employs a qualitative research design that is based on the neoclassical realism and the rational actor model to study the influence of systemic pressures, domestic political processes and leader priorities on policy orientations. The Nawaz Sharif government has also been marked by the introduction and the swift development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a source of economic modernization and energy security, and a realistic approach to the balance with the United States. Conversely, the administration of Imran Khan was originally cautious on CPEC, focusing on transparency and fiscal sustainability but has reverted to Beijing during economic crises and poor U.S. Pakistan relations. The major areas of comparison are the approaches to CPEC, the Pakistan-China Free Trade Agreement (FTAII), diplomatic discourse, and ways of addressing the U.S-China rivalry. The results point out continuity and divergence: continuity in the structural imperative to fit into China and divergence in the style of leadership, negotiation policies and diplomatic rhetoric. In the end, this paper proves that the China policy of Pakistan is determined not only by the geopolitical factors but also by variations by the leadership, which has an important implication to the strategical independence of the country. The study adds to the literature on foreign policy analysis in South Asia by demonstrating the interaction between domestic politics and international pressures, which create both consistency and variation in the external alignments in Pakistan.