Chinese President Hu Jintao will seek to balance his nation's relations with nuclear powered neighbours India and Pakistan when he begins back-to-back visits to the South Asian rivals on Monday.
Hu will spend three days each in India and Pakistan on his first visit to both nations by any Chinese president in a decade.
During his visit to Pakistan, Hu will look to shore up China's "all-weather" relationship with Islamabad that includes strong military ties, nuclear power cooperation, generous Chinese aid and a pending free trade agreement.
Last year, trade between China and Pakistan grew by 39 percent to 4.26 billion dollars compared with 2004, according to Chinese statistics.
Although nothing has been officially announced, Chinese state press have reported that Hu is likely to finalise a free trade agreement with Pakistan while in Islamabad.
More controversially, Beijing is also the largest arms supplier to Pakistan and China has given much help to its ally in building a nuclear power industry.
China has built an atomic power plant in Pakistan and a second is under construction.
Islamabad is looking to further boost nuclear cooperation with Beijing after US President George W. Bush offered India a nuclear deal in March.
Pakistan's dependence on China in this realm is particularly acute as it plans to build five or six more nuclear power plants, Ishtiaq Ahmed, professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam university in Islamabad told AFP.
However, China has played down speculation that it will announce further nuclear deals during Hu's visit.
"As far as I know there will be no new arrangements in this area," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang said.

INDIA VISIT
Hu's stop to India, where he will hold talks with President Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders while also visiting Mumbai and Agra.
"In their talks, the leaders will map out the future direction of the relationship," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told journalists.
"They will also show the world that the development of relations between China and India will not only provide opportunities to the two countries, but will also play a positive contribution to world peace, stability and development."
Since the end of the Cold War, when China and India viewed each other as adversaries, both capitals have worked to overcome long-standing suspicions.
These have often centred on New Delhi's concerns over China's cozy relationship with Pakistan, Su Hao, a security expert at the China Foreign Affairs University, told AFP.
India has particularly bristled over Beijing's strong support for Pakistan's nuclear power industry and its deep military ties with Islamabad
"(But) following the Cold War, China has focused on improving relations with all of its neighbours as China needs peaceful regional conditions for domestic economic growth," Su told AFP.
"To do this, China has had to earnestly adjust its relations with both India and Pakistan.
"China does not want to create competition between the two and does not want to create an image that it is favouring one at the expense of the other."
And while political and diplomatic issues still add tensions to their relationship, trade between China and India has expanded quickly in recent years.
Bilateral trade jumped 37.5 percent to reach 18.7 billion dollars in 2005 and is expected to hit 20 billion dollars this year, Chinese statistics show, and both sides are looking to Hu's visit to propel this further.
"The India-China relationship is bound to be one of the most important bilateral relationships in the coming decade simply by the sheer weight of demographic and economic numbers," Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Wednesday.
"How we manage this relationship will have a tremendous impact on peace and stability in the regional and increasingly the global context."
During Hu's visit both sides are expected to continue talks on an agreement that would establish a free-trade area involving 2.4 billion people, or more than one-third of mankind.
Although India and China have been engaged in marathon negotiations on a sticky border dispute stemming from a 1962 frontier war, both capitals have voiced hopes of ensuring that the issue does not become an obstacle to better ties.