PAKISTAN and China celebrate their 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations, indicating the strategic value of their true friendship, fraternity of relations and futuristic orientations of iron-clad brotherhood, which are based on immense love and mutual respect and which have remained unconditional, uncompromised and untidy. Despite this reality, self-styled experts, retired bureaucrats, sponsored pseudo-intellectuals and, notably, former FBR Chairman Mr Akram Naeem Bharoka and many other paid agents try to undermine China’s role and misrepresent CPEC’s agreements, loans, projects and policies as harmful to Pakistan’s national interests.

According to Keohane & Nye (1977), experts of liberal institutionalism, international cooperation flourishes when states create institutions that reduce transaction costs, enhance information flows and create reciprocal obligations. CPEC represents precisely such an institutional framework, a bilateral mechanism that has operationalized the complex interdependence between Pakistan and China through multiple channels: trade, investment, infrastructure and people-to-people contacts.

Moreover, Keohane (1984) demonstrated that sustained cooperation builds reliability and reciprocity, characteristics evident in Pak-China relations since 1951. Haas (1958), through “Neo-functionalism”, highlighted how integration in one sector creates spillover effects into others. CPEC exemplifies this, expanding cooperation from infrastructure into energy, telecommunications, industrial parks, agriculture, maritime security, defence production, naval cooperation and space. Stephen Walt’s Balance of Threat theory (1987) similarly suggests that states form alliances to counter perceived threats. Pakistan’s........

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