Ask yourself a simple question. When was the last time Pakistan got to help write the rules of an international framework, instead of spending years explaining its position to one designed without it in mind? That question is the reason this article exists.

For a decade, the Pakistan-China relationship has been told through the language of connectivity. Highways, power plants, Gwadar’s berths. CPEC gave the two countries a shared project. What it never quite gave them was a shared vocabulary for security itself. China’s Global Security Initiative, first floated by President Xi Jinping at the Boao Forum in April 2022 and formally issued as a concept paper in February 2023, offers exactly that. It rests on a handful of ideas that sound simple on paper: security is indivisible, no state should build its own safety on another’s insecurity, and development and security are two sides of one coin. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has already voiced support for the initiative in principle. The next step is to move from voicing support to shaping what it actually means.

GSI’s core claim, that no country should have to pay for insecurity manufactured elsewhere, is not a foreign concept Pakistan needs convincing on.

GSI’s........

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