Searching Friends and Strengthening Security: Pak-China Relations in 1950s

Abstract

The paper covers Sino-Pakistan bilateral relations from the establishment of their diplomatic relations to the end of year 1960. The paper doesn’t describe the cultural and economic aspects of their bilateral relations in detail. Although there were some suspicions and differences between China and Pakistan, but as a whole, the period witnessed for normal relations, if not cordial one. The era saw search for making friends in international community by the two states. Both the countries took start as independent and sovereign states in the circumstances, when the world was divided into two rival blocs. The need for making friends, in the presence of the heydays of Cold War, was the result of their respective historical legacies and thereafter, the international system. The Communist China emerged after a long civil war with the Nationalists, and Pakistan got independence from the British colonialism. The paper concludes that, for Pakistan, the continuing threat and hostilities from India; and for China, the Taiwan issue side by side with the United States’ policies, added a new thinking in the minds of the two states’ leaders.