---
title: 'Between Mediation and Manipulation: China’s Role in the India-Pakistan Rivalry'
url: 'https://thediplomaticinsight.com/chinas-role-in-india-pak-rivalry/'
author: 'Atiqullah Baig Mughul'
date: '2026-01-07T17:27:04+05:00'
categories:
  - 'Feature'
---

# Between Mediation and Manipulation: China’s Role in the India-Pakistan Rivalry

China’s emerging engagement with South Asia has become one of the most significant structural change of the strategic landscape in the region. Long considered a peripheral player in the face of a long-standing rivalry between India and Pakistan, Beijing has gradually become a key variable in determining conflict dynamics, crisis behavior and regional balances of power. This transformation has led to conflicting interpretations of what is China’s role.

Chinese officials regularly present their country as a responsible peacemaker that is committed to regional stability and dialogue. Critics, especially in India and some of the West, say that China is more a powerbroker whose closer strategic alignment with Pakistan locks in rivalry and dims the prospects for durable peace. Others go further, suggesting that China’s actions may inadvertently – or deliberately – exacerbate instability, making China a latent troublemaker in south Asia.

These divergent interpretations raise an essential question, how should China’s role in the Indo-Pak conflict be interpreted?

China’s behavior is best analyzed not through the normative labels, but through the lens of structural theory. Drawing on New Offensive Realism, it argues that seemingly contradictory Chinese behavior, which tries to promote de-escalation and increase Pakistan’s strategic position, is an integral part of a coherent security and influence maximization strategy in conditions of uncertainty.

Rather than seeing China’s roles as contradictory, New Offensive Realism proposes that peacemaking, power brokering, and selective destabilization can co-exist in one grand strategy pursued by a rising power attempting to prevent unfavorable changes in the regional balance of power.

South Asia has a special place in China’s strategic imagination. It is both geographically close, politically unstable and tightly intertwined with China’s larger competition with India. Unlike theaters far away from China where China’s interests are mostly economic or symbolic, South Asia is directly linked to China’s core security interests such as border stability, maritime access and great power competition.

The Indo-Pak conflict in particular is a risk and an opportunity for Beijing. While the threat of escalation between two nuclear-armed states threatens regional chaos and economic disruption, the persistence of rivalry also limits India’s strategic options and the ability to concentrate on competition with China to the exclusion of all else. Managing this contradiction is the key to Beijing’s approach.

**Read More: [Pakistan Draws Renewed Global Attention After May Conflict with India: Envoy](https://thediplomaticinsight.com/pakistan-draws-global-attention-may-conflict-india/)**

New Offensive Realism offers a good framework for understanding this behavior. Building upon classical offensive realism, which focuses upon the incentives for states to maximize relative power, the “new” variant has come to acknowledge that power accumulation in the contemporary era is not limited to territorial conquest. Economic connectivity, military partnerships, diplomatic leverage and crisis management all represent tools by which states seek regional dominance or deny their rivals.

From this point of view, China’s actions in South Asia are not altruistic and reckless but are calculated responses to the structural imperatives thrown up by the rise of India and the power shift in the Indo-Pacific.

China’s self-presentation as a peacemaker has been more pronounced in recent years with times of acute Indo-Pak tension. During the crisis of May 2025, which followed cross-border violence and aerial fighting between India and Pakistan, Beijing made a public statement urging restraint and dialogue. According to Reuters, Chinese officials stressed the need to maintain ceasefire agreements and stop escalation. China’s foreign minister also held consultations with both Islamabad and New Delhi and Chinese diplomats suggested that Beijing had played a quiet, but constructive role in easing tensions.

Such actions are in line with China’s overall diplomatic narrative emphasizing peaceful development, non-interference and against unilateral coercion. In official discourse, China props itself up as the alternate model of great-power behavior and contrasts it with what it calls Western interventionism. In South Asia, this story does resonate to some extent, especially in Pakistan, where China is generally perceived as a reliable and deferential partner.

However, there is still a large amount of skepticism towards China’s image of a peacemaker, particularly in India. Indian policy makers and analysts have asked repeatedly whether China can credibly mediate in disputes that involve Pakistan, given the depth of Sino-Pak strategic ties. Indian comment in the major newspapers has been that China’s exhortations to restraint are often a way of freezing crises at a time when India might wish to impose costs on Pakistan.

From this perspective, then, Chinese diplomacy is less about dispute resolution and more about maintaining a status quo, in Beijing’s interests.

New Offensive Realism helps to explain why these perceptions have remained. From a structural perspective, China has very little reason to help bring the Indo-Pak conflict to a definitive resolution. A permanent settlement, especially one that reinforces India’s strategic position, could give New Delhi an opportunity to divert military and diplomatic resources to its eastern frontiers and competition with China at sea.

**Read More: [China Steps In: Calls for Peace Between Pakistan, India](https://thediplomaticinsight.com/china-calls-peace-between-pakistan-india/)**

Persistent rivalry between India and Pakistan, by contrast, insures that India remains strategically divided. De-escalation, therefore, is useful not because of the resulting peace, but because of averting outcomes leading to shifts in the regional balance of power in India’s favor.

China’s role as a powerbroker is even more apparent when we consider its strategic Pakistan partnership. Often described as an “all-weather” relationship, Sino-Pak ties range from military, economic to diplomatic cooperation and intelligence sharing. China has been the biggest supplier of major conventional weaponry to Pakistan for over a decade.

According to the data that is often quoted in peer-reviewed security studies and has been reported by leading newspapers, Chinese arms made up around three quarters of Pakistan’s major weapons imports between 2018 and 2023. These transfers include advanced fighter aircraft, naval vessels, air defense and missile technologies.

The operational importance of this partnership was highlighted in the May 2025 crisis where Pakistan deployed Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighter jets and PL-15 air-to-air missiles. Media analysis singled out that this was one of the first times Chinese combat aircraft were deployed in a conflict live environment, with implications for China’s increasingly important role as a defense exporter and strategic enabler.

For Pakistan, access to Chinese military technology is useful to counteract India’s quantitative and qualitative superiority. For China, it guarantees that Pakistan continues to be a credible counterweight to India.

Economic cooperation further intensifies this dynamic. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), at over $60 billion, is a key part of the initiative of the Chinese Belt and Road. CPEC projects range from energy generation, transport infrastructure, industrial areas, and port development.

Gwadar port, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, has been mentioned by analysts as a strategic asset with possible implications for China’s sea through and energy security. While Chinese officials emphasize on the developmental aspects of CPEC, many scholars notice its strategic aspects, such as strengthening Chinese presence in the Arabian Sea region.

**Read More: [2025 Marked by Failures and Setbacks for India: Report](https://thediplomaticinsight.com/2025-marked-by-failures-setbacks-for-india/)**

From the point of view of New Offensive Realism, CPEC has several strategic roles. It ties Pakistan economically to China, making Islamabad more dependent on the goodwill of Beijing. It helps in building resilience of Pakistan to mitigate energy shortages and infrastructure deficits. And it gives China leverage over Pakistan’s policy choices, especially in times of crises.

This combination of military and economic ties places China as a powerbroker that has the ability to influence Pakistan’s behavior while at the same time limiting the strategic environment in India.

Yet it is not without its risks for this power brokering role. China will have to carefully do the juggling act of empowering Pakistan without destabilizing escalation. Excessive Pakistani adventurism could lead to large-scale conflict, endanger Chinese investments and invite international scrutiny.

This is why China sometimes accompanies military support by diplomatic restraining, which informs Pakistan that Chinese backing is very large, but not unconditional. In this sense, the influence of China plays a role as both an enabler and an overbearing factor.

The view of China as a potential troublemaker is the result of in large part of the indirect consequences of this strategy. Critics say Chinese backing gives Pakistan less incentive to compromise, especially on such divisive issues as Kashmir. By giving diplomatic cover in international forums and protecting Pakistan from punitive measures, China is blamed for perpetuating a cycle of provocation and restraint that feeds a pattern of rivalry that has not been able to resolve itself.

One of the things that Indian analysts often cite as evidence of Chinese strategic bias, not principled neutrality, is China’s actions in multilateral institutions.

China’s engagement in infrastructure projects in disputed territories is also a source of these concerns. CPEC routes that cross regions claimed by India have been understood as sovereignty violations and attempts to change facts on the ground in New Delhi. Such projects, together with China’s growing military presence on the Sino-Indian border, reinforce Indian perceptions of encirclement and strategic pressure.

**Read More: [The Blue Frontier: How the Indian Ocean is Redefining South Asian Geopolitics](https://thediplomaticinsight.com/how-indian-ocean-is-redefining-south-asian-geopolitics/)**

However, calling China a troublemaker is a risk of confusing intention with outcome. New Offensive Realism is a cautionary against supposing that instability is always the goal of state behavior. Instead, instability may be a side effect of efforts to maximize security in a competitive environment.

From Beijing’s point of view, a degree of controlled tension between India and Pakistan may be preferable to war as well as to reconciliation. This is not to say that China wants chaos, but rather, it wants predictability in rivalry.

China’s mediation claims therefore must be read in the context of this structure. Beijing may truly want to avoid war, most importantly nuclear escalation, that would have disastrous implications for the stability and global markets of the region. In the meantime, its diplomatic interventions are unlikely to disrupt the strategic asymmetries underlying rivalries. Peace in this framework is instrumental rather than transformative.

The wider implications of China’s role in South Asia go beyond the Indo-Pak dyad. China’s approach provides lessons on the manner in which raising powers resolve regional conflicts in a multipolar world. Rather than opt for peace or conflict, such powers may wish to deal with instability in ways that maintain strategic advantage.

This way of doing things challenges conventional ideas about mediation and begs questions about the future of conflict resolution in places where great-power competition is evident.

For South Asia, Chinese involvement is adding a new degree of complexity to an already volatile security environment. The Indo-Pak rivalry is no longer a largely bilateral affair but is embedded in the triangular relationship based on China’s strategic calculations. This makes the need for crisis management mechanisms and communication channels with the countries, not just Pakistan, but also China, more important.

At the global level, Chinese behavior challenges one-dimensional dichotomies between revisionist and status-quo powers. In South Asia, China does seem to be supporting the status quo in some ways and revising it in others. It is opposed to major war but in favor of structural arrangements which prevent the rise of India.

**Read More: [Congress Demands Modi Clarify China’s Claim of Mediating Pak-India Truce](https://thediplomaticinsight.com/congress-modi-clarify-chinas-claim-mediating-pak-india-truce/)**

This selective revisionism is part of the logic of New Offensive Realism, which predicts that the rising powers will try to revise regional orders incrementally and not necessarily try to overturn them outright.

In conclusion, the role of China in the Indo-Pak conflict cannot be categorized. It is simultaneously a peacemaker in moments of crisis, as well as powerbroker in the context of regional balances and, indirectly, as a contributor to permanent rivalry. These roles are not mutually exclusive, but complementary aspects of a consistent strategy that promises to maximize China’s security and influence in a competitive regional environment.

Through the perspective of New Offensive Realism, China’s paradoxical behavior is less contradictory, and more structurally determined. As China’s strength continues to rise, its multifaceted interaction with South Asia is likely to continue to be an ever-present feature of the region’s strategic horizon, with major implications for the region’s peace and stability – and for great-power politics.

 

 

**The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Diplomatic Insight.*