CHINA’S Foreign Ministry has said that Pakistan keeps its strategic ally aware of its cooperation with the United States in the mining sector and the two countries have maintained a “high-level strategic mutual trust and close communication”.
Responding to a question, its spokesperson Lin Jian stated that Islamabad and Beijing have been in communication regarding the mining activities and “Pakistan stressed that its interactions with the US will never harm China’s interests or its cooperation with China”.
The clarification is reassuring in the sense that it dispels the possibility of any upheaval in bilateral relations between Pakistan and China, especially in the midst of reports that Islamabad’s growing economic cooperation, especially in the mining sector, could negatively affect the otherwise time-tested ties with China. A report appearing in a section of international media claimed that the recent export controls announced by China had their origin in Pak-US cooperation in rare earths trade but the spokesperson took pains to explain that these ‘have nothing to do with Pakistan’. He reiterated that China and Pakistan were “all-weather strategic cooperative partners” whose iron-clad friendship “has stood the test of time’’. China has rejected media reports suggesting Pakistan had given rare earth samples to the US, calling them “misinformed, invented or designed to drive a wedge” between the two countries. The statement of the spokesperson will not only shatter hopes of those who wanted to sow seeds of difference between the two close friends but also highlight the importance of high-level strategic mutual trust and close communication on major issues of common interest.
