Pakistan President General Musharraf made three trips to Beijing in less than a year (in December 2001, January 2002, and August 2002) for urgent security consultations with President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji and reportedly obtained “firm assurances of support in the event of a war†with India. At the time of heightened tensions in mid-January 2002, General Zhang Wannian, Vice-Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, met with General Muhammad Aziz Khan, Chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of the Staff Committee, and was quoted as telling Khan: “For many years the militaries of our two nations have maintained exchanges and cooperation at the highest and all levels and in every field. This fully embodies the all-weather friendship our nations maintain.â€9 Zhang’s reference to “cooperation . . . in every field†(meaning the nuclear and missile fields) was a thinly veiled warning to India to back off. Later, Beijing matched words with deeds by
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rushing two dozen F-7 jet fighters, nuclear and missile components, and other weapon systems to shore up Pakistani defenses in the tense border face-off. A secret “futuristic arms development cooperation†agreement was signed during General Musharraf’s five-day visit to China in December 2001 to construct, among other weapons, an all-solid-fuel Shaheen III missile with a range of 3,500-4,000 kilometers to target all major Indian cities.10 The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops from the Military Regions of Chengdu and Lanzhou and their respective sub-divisions, the Xizang (Tibet) and Wulumuqi (Urumqi), along China’s southern borders, were also put on alert in January to test their war preparedness should the conflict in the Indian subcontinent spill over onto Chinese soil.
The Chinese leaders had reportedly conveyed the following message to Musharraf: “China hopes Pakistan will not initiate any assault. Pakistan should not get involved in wars and instead focus on economic construction. However, if a war does break out between India and Pakistan, Beijing will firmly stand on the side of Islamabad.â€11 Soon thereafter, President Musharraf in a televised speech on 12 January 2002 announced a crackdown on extremist organizations waging jihad from Pakistani territory, and as a result, Indo-Pakistani tensions somewhat subsided. The Chinese media claimed some credit for “mediating†between the two sub-continental rivals despite the Indian government’s aversion to the dreaded “m†word: “Mediated by the United States, China, Britain, and Russia, leaders of India and Pakistan recently expressed their desire to try to control the tense situation.â€12 Interestingly, this stance contradicted then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh’s statement during Premier Zhu’s visit to New Delhi in January 2002 that “China has neither any intention, nor shall it play any mediatory role between India and Pakistan.â€13 Not only that, the Chinese Foreign Minister also succeeded in persuading his Russian counterpart to issue a “Joint Declaration on the India-Pakistan Situation,†signaling to New Delhi that, for the first time, Beijing and Moscow had a unified stand on the dispute. In concrete policy terms, it meant that New Delhi could no longer count on the Russian veto in the UN Security Council in the event of a war.
