A month has passed since the dastardly terror attack in Pahalgam, executed by Pakistan-backed proxies, killed 26 civilians, bringing into sharp relief the persistence of terrorism as a state policy of Pakistan for waging an asymmetric, unconventional war on India. Operation Sindoor, India’s calibrated, decisive strikes on terrorist and military infrastructure in Pakistan resulted in the decimation of terrorist facilities in Bahawalpur, Muridke, Bhimber, Sarjal, and Muzaffarabad. Pakistan’s unprovoked violation of Indian airspace through heavy-calibre weaponry, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and Turkish drones, were intercepted and neutralised by Indian air defence systems (AD); targeted, retaliatory strikes crippled Pakistan Air Force infrastructure in Murid, Chaklala, and Nur Khan, impairing the PAF’s ability to strike Indian territory. 

Operation Sindoor ushered in a new normal in South Asia’s security paradigm in four ways. First, it burnished active deterrence in response to terrorism emanating from Pakistan, resembling, but greatly surpassing in magnitude, the kinetic measures taken on terror networks after the attacks in Uri, Pathankot, and Pulwama. Second, as a corollary, the sweeping response, and the Prime Minister’s statements after Operation Sindoor, indicate that any act of terror will not be treated as an incident but as an act of war. Third, the kinetic measures were preceded by non-kinetic measures, including the abeyance of the Indus Waters Treaty, indicating an integrated, comprehensive response intended to punish and deter Pakistan at several levels. Lastly, by targeting military installations in retaliation, the operation effaced the distinction between conventional and non-conventional adversaries, treating both as a single enemy.

The cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan has cleared the fog of the conflict. Not only has South Asia’s security paradigm changed, but the threat of a two-front conflict has now materialised.  The clashes marked a high point of collusion between China and Pakistan evinced in the military hardware employed against India, China-Pakistan diplomacy, and information warfare. The ceasefire between India and Pakistan in 2021 coincided with the mobilisation of troops to the Eastern theatre to counter the Chinese threat, as relations reached a nadir after clashes in Doklam and Galwan. The recent flare-up hints at a cause for recalibration. Additionally, the two-front threat is no longer geographically contained in the East and the West; rather, Sino-Pakistani collusion has bracketed the two theatres. It is, therefore, imperative to dissect  Chinese motivations and expectations from its ‘all-weather’ alliance with Pakistan in light of the recent conflict and this article hopes to achieve that.

China-Pakistan Diplomacy during Operation Sindoor

China adopted an equivocal stance after the terror attack in Pahalgam, though the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry condemned it. However, within a few days, Shehbaz Sharif’s attempts at internationalising the terror attack and, by extension, Jammu and Kashmir, found resonance in Wang Yi, as he urged an international probe into the attack, potentially absolving Pakistan-linked/based terrorists of responsibility. Subsequent diplomatic communiqués, especially after the commencement of Operation Sindoor, demonstrated the privileging of Pakistani interests in Chinese strategic calculus over India’s legitimate security concerns and right to retaliate. After India struck terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan, China reacted with ‘regret’, urging restraint’, in effect, putting the onus on India to scale down hostilities. The Chinese Ambassador’s meeting with the Pakistani Prime Minister and the latter’s telephonic conversations reaffirmed China’s alliance with Pakistan. India’s retaliation was framed as an aggression on Pakistan’s sovereignty, with Chinese state media echoing Pakistan’s disinformation on loss of civilian life and the downing of Indian aircraft.

Causes of Chinese Adversarial Policy

The shift from neutral to adversarial rhetoric can be attributed to a host of reasons, primarily  the clientelist relations between Pakistan and China. The conflict proved to be a testing ground for Chinese military hardware on which Pakistan has increasingly come to rely. Beijing has sold $8.2 billion worth of weaponry to Pakistan since 2015, and 81% of Pakistan’s military hardware imports  since 2020 originated in China. China co-produces the JF-17 fighter jets under a license manufacturing agreement with Pakistan, while theb J10-C aircraft, extensively deployed in this conflict with the JF-17s, were sold for over $30 million per aircraft. Both were equipped with PL-15 air-to-air missiles that misfired; China-supplied air defence system, the HQ-9P, and radars were flattened by Indian retaliatory strikes.

As China’s military-industrial complex markets itself to replace Western manufacturers in the Global South, Operation Sindoor couldn’t have come at a worse time. China, though the 4^th largest defence exporter in the world, has seen its defence exports decline by over 5% since 2019; more than 60% of its exports are absorbed by Pakistan alone. Since India has released satellite imagery of the destruction caused to PAF’s arsenal, the Hang Seng Defence and Aerospace Index has been plummeting.

The performance of Chinese advanced defence technology vis-à-vis India’s Western, Russian, and indigenous ammunition was therefore a matter of commercial and nationalist sensitivity. Chinese social media and news outlets aired unverified Pakistani propaganda. Xinhua, for instance, refused to call the Pahalgam attack a terrorist incident. Chinese state media parroted the DG-ISPR while publishing misleading, unverified reports of the downing of Indian jets by Chinese ADSs installed on Pakistan’s Eastern frontier, clearly to impart vigour to its defence-industrial complex for the consumption of the Global South. By airing false claims of collateral damage and civilian casualties in Pakistan, the China-Pakistan nexus aimed to paint India as the aggressor, supplying a moral advantage to Pakistan. Chinese social media was replete with disinformation, adulating Pakistani military.

The pattern of information warfare employed by China against rivals is an element of belligerence that operates below the State but not without its consent. Chinese state media colludes with social media companies to influence opinions in its rival country’s and world citizenry in favour of China, its allies, and proxies. Although China’s Foreign Ministry adopted a gradualist approach to enhance support for Pakistan, disinformation operations, already in motion, left little to conjecture about its stance.

The disengagement and patrolling agreement on the friction points in Eastern Ladakh did not reflect a thaw, but a calibrated return to a marginally less tense phase in a frigid bilateral status quo. It did not influence China’s expansionist designs on South Asia. By trying to hyphenate India and Pakistan and supporting the latter, China wishes to enmesh India in South Asian intrigues, impairing the rise of a competitor in the race for leadership of the Global South. Since the onset of the 21^st century, India’s pivot to Southeast Asia, East Asia, and, of late, the Gulf and Africa has redefined the notion of neighbourhood. The inking of CEPAs with the UAE and a CECA with Australia, in addition to the conclusion of FTA talks with Britain, have positioned India as a viable partner for the near- and friend-shoring strategies of major companies, as the Chinese economy faces disinflationary pressures amidst the exodus of foreign and domestic capital.

The pillar of the China-Pakistan ‘all-weather relationship’ remains the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the $62-billion project linking  the Maritime Silk Road with the Silk Road Economic Belt under the Belt and Road Initiative. Despite security challenges and Pakistan’s economic crisis, the CPEC has perhaps reached a point of no return. Its extension to Afghanistan, driven largely by the latter’s country mineral wealth, will raise the importance of Pakistan in China’s strategic calculus, taking the benefits of connectivity to Pakistan’s North-West and potentially restoring relations with the Taliban regime.

China is emboldened due to the retreat of the US. The uncertainty brought upon by Trump’s election—in addition to India’s strategic patience—arguably contributed to the disengagement process, allowing China to concentrate on the US by wooing its partners. Trump and the State Department’s misdirected claims of negotiating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after calling it a bilateral issue have not aided the US cause. Those claims did not spring solely from Trump’s need for validation of his alleged negotiating skills—the absence of which in the Middle East and Eastern Europe is remarkable. That he salvaged Pakistan from humiliation after the Pakistan Crypto Council signed a deal with World Liberty Financial, linked with Trump’s family, is not coincidental. US companies also expressed interest in the Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum, held in April. US actions on trade have not only soured relations with India; coupled with confrontational diplomacy with Europe, Canada, Japan, most of South America and South Africa; they strengthen China as the alternative superpower. In this situation, Beijing can concentrate on encircling India with PRC-friendly regimes to nip its ambitions.

To conclude, Operation Sindoor has paradigmatically altered India’s Pakistan policy and has exposed the depth of Sino-Pakistani collusion. India’s kinetic and non-kinetic measures have introduced a new strategic doctrine—one that no longer draws a line between state and non-state actors when national security is threatened. China’s calibrated diplomacy, military-industrial entanglements, and disinformation campaigns underline its evolving role as a belligerent actor.  To counter this, India must sustain its doctrine of deterrence, deepen strategic ties with like-minded partners, and invest in narrative-building across the Global South to offset Chinese (and US-European) media and political bias and influence.