How India-Pakistan tensions (and US-China rivalry) are raising nuclear stakes

An escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan is likely to increase Chinese support for Pakistan and add impetus to India’s strategic partnership with the United States, further polarising the subcontinent geopolitically and increasing the nuclear threat in the region.

China is now expected to raise its already substantial defence cooperation with “all-weather friend” Pakistan and possibly resume transfers of strategic weapons technology that were officially ceased in the 1990s under US pressure.

Why China is caught in India-Pakistan crossfire

“The conventional wisdom is that China will intensify support to Islamabad amid rising India-Pakistan tension,” said Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a Washington think tank.

“China will want to reiterate its commitment to Pakistan and express its strong support, particularly if Beijing starts to worry that India’s more muscular approach towards Pakistan could entail efforts to undercut or even sabotage the China-funded China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project.”

The US$46 billion trade route running from Pakistan’s Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea to China’s Xinjiang (新疆), is a “One Belt, One Road” initiative designed to expand China’s economic and political outreach in Asia as well as provide its landlocked, backward western provinces a sea route for trade.