China stands ready to work with Pakistan to “firmly” support each other, strengthen cooperation, and deepen strategic coordination, President Xi Jinping said on Friday.
He said this during his meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is on a five-day visit to the neighbouring country, in Beijing.
“China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperative partnership had continuously deepened and enjoyed solid public support with a strong internal driving force and broad prospects for development,” a statement from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China said.
He pointed out that China and Pakistan “are good neighbors linked by mountains and rivers, good friends who share faith and righteousness, good partners who help each other, and good brothers who share weal and woe.”
The Chinese president noted that Beijing stands ready to “accelerate the building of an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era, and make greater contributions to regional peace, stability, development and prosperity.”
PM Shehbaz and Chinese President Xi affirmed consensus on the up-gradation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and advancing high-quality development of the project in the second phase, according to a statement from Islamabad.
The premier held a “long and in-depth discussion” in a meeting with the Chinese president at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The two leaders were accompanied by the federal ministers and senior officials. It was PM Shehbaz’s first meeting with the Chinese president since assuming office in 2024.
The two leaders reaffirmed the time-honoured “All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership” and expressed the resolve to further deepen cooperation across diverse domains ranging from political and security to economic, trade, and people-to-people exchanges.
They also exchanged views on regional and global developments including Afghanistan, Palestine and South Asia including the serious human rights situation in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The two sides reiterated their longstanding support for each other’s issues of core interest.
While commending President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development Initiative, the prime minister underscored that as the flagship project of BRI, CPEC had “significantly contributed” to Pakistan’s socio-economic development. “The two leaders reaffirmed the consensus to high-quality development of CPEC and timely completion of major ongoing projects,” it said.
PM Shehbaz reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to the “high-quality development” of CPEC and to foster synergy between the development strategies of the two countries through close coordination.
He underlined Pakistan’s commitment and full support for the safety and security of Chinese nationals, projects and institutions in Pakistan.
The premier briefed President Xi on Pakistan’s policies for economic reform and sustained growth, industrial development, agricultural modernisation and regional connectivity and the critical role played by CPEC in Pakistan’s development.
He underlined that the government’s agenda for people-centric, socio-economic development resonates with the concept of “shared prosperity” embraced by China.
This comes days before Pakistan presents its annual budget and applies for a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan.
Pakistan’s location on the Arabian Sea gives it strategic importance for China, providing an overland route out towards the Gulf of Aden and onto the Suez Canal, and enabling Chinese ships to avoid the potential chokepoint of the Malacca Strait.
Sharif’s government is expected to seek at least $6 billion under a new IMF programme after it presents its annual budget, which sources say will happen on June 10. And the $27 billion or so that Pakistan owes China, according to World Bank data, is central to this next round of discussions with the Fund.
In May, the IMF opened discussions on the new loan after Islamabad completed a short-term $3 billion programme, which helped stave off a sovereign debt default last summer.
Pakistan owes China almost 13% of its total debt, which was taken on to pay for infrastructure projects over the years and other types of spending.
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Beijing has lent Islamabad almost twice as much as its second- and third-ranked multilateral lenders, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to which Pakistan owes $16.2 billion and $13.7 billion respectively.
Chinese firms have also invested a further $14 billion in Pakistan since a new economic corridor connecting their countries was announced in the summer of 2013 as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative, data from the American Enterprise Institute think tank shows.
Most of that investment was made by Chinese state-owned energy companies financing fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants, as well as logistics routes under construction connecting Gwadar Port in the Arabian Sea with the Xinjiang region in China’s northwest.
