(TibetanReview.net, May22’26) – Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on May 21 exchanged congratulatory messages on the 75th anniversary of their diplomatic ties, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency May 21. Earlier, on May 7, China made televised remarks saying it helped Pakistan to shoot down Indian fighter planes during Operation Sindoor, New Delhi’s anti-terror reprisal against Islamabad, on its first anniversary.
Pakistan’s antipathy towards India is at the core of its iron-brother commitment to and reliance on China. China itself is New Delhi’s main security concern, frequently provoking it from across occupied Tibet, especially in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, the latter of which it calls “Southern Tibet” and therefore part of its greater China territory.
Xi said that China and Pakistan are good friends and all-weather strategic cooperative partners linked by mountains and rivers and sharing weal and woe, the report said.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations 75 years ago, no matter how the international situation has changed, the friendship between China and Pakistan has always remained rock-solid and unbreakable, Xi has said.
He has added that the two countries have maintained high-level mutual political trust, practical cooperation, security cooperation and international collaboration for a long time, setting a model for state-to-state relations.
Xi has said he attached great importance to developing China-Pakistan relations and was willing to work with Zardari to take the anniversary as an opportunity to enhance strategic communication, carry forward traditional friendship, deepen all-round cooperation, and accelerate the building of an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era, so that China-Pakistan relations can better benefit the two peoples and contribute to regional peace and development.
Pakistan on its part has announced May 21 that it would issue a commemorative coin to mark the anniversary, to be available to the public from May 25 through its banking counters across the country.
“To mark the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China, the Government of Pakistan has decided to issue a commemorative coin of Rs 75 denomination,” the PTI news agency May 22 quoted the State Bank of Pakistan as announcing.
China is Pakistan’s largest trading partner and a major investor, particularly through the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of Beijing’s Xi-led ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.
The two sides are already holding events and ceremonies to commemorate the anniversary year, the report noted.
The report said that on May 21, Pakistan’s top political leadership attended an event in Islamabad marking the occasion, where Cai Dafeng, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress of China, represented the Chinese leadership.
Also, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is scheduled to visit China from May 23 to 26 to deepen bilateral ties further and attend events related to the anniversary celebrations, the report added.