BEIJING (Reuters) – Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's visit to China from Tuesday allows Islamabad to show it has another major power to turn to just as relations with the United States have turned increasingly strained after the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The visit is part of long-planned celebrations for 60 years of diplomatic ties but the vows of support from Beijing will be especially timely for Islamabad.
"This visit will be a show for the U.S., the Pakistani public and the wider world that Pakistan has other options," said Andrew Small, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund think tank in Brussels who has studied China's role in Pakistan.
"There's no impression that China could step into the United States' shoes, but it's a useful bargaining chip."
An already tense relationship with the United States, Pakistan's major donor, was badly bruised after U.S. forces on May 2 killed bin Laden in Pakistan where he appears to have been in hiding for several years.
Senior U.S. Senator John Kerry, speaking in Islamabad on Monday, warned that members of U.S. Congress were asking "tough questions" about aid to Islamabad over bin Laden, though he said ties were too important to be unraveled by the incident.
HANDSHAKES AND SMILES
In Beijing, Gilani has no worry of any public upbraiding.
"At least, this way Pakistan can tell the United States that it still has China to turn to, and China does indeed have to show support for Pakistan to help it get past its current hardships," said Hu Shisheng, an expert on China's relations with South Asian countries at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government think tank in Beijing.
In an address to the nation about bin Laden's death, Gilani described China as an "all-weather friend" for Pakistan where the United States is widely distrusted despite the billions of dollars it spends there in aid, in large part to sustain the Pakistani military in the war against Islamist militants.
But Pakistan's government and military are too reliant on U.S. security and economic aid -- about $20 billion in the past 10 years -- to risk that alliance.
Nor does Beijing want to wade into volatile Pakistani politics, risking its own interests and alienating India, a big but wary trade partner, said several observers.
A STRATEGIC ALTERNATIVE? NOT YET
Chinese officials and state media have indicated that they will use the four-day visit to cast Beijing as a steadfast partner -- unlike Washington, described in one editorial as a fickle and demanding interloper.
"U.S. opinion has not only failed to criticize its own unilateralism in this action (against bin Laden) violating Pakistani territorial sovereignty, it has vilified Pakistan as a scapegoat for its own rough going in its war against terror," said an editorial on Monday in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, China's main official newspaper.
Business with China has been increasingly important for Pakistan's troubled economy. China has also been crucial to Pakistan's nuclear energy expansion, despite jitters in Washington, New Delhi and other capitals.
Beijing's support for Pakistan reflects its worries about instability spilling into its own western regions, especially heavily Muslim Xinjiang, said Hamayoun Khan, an lecturer at the National Defense University in Islamabad who studies China.
"Pakistan is a strategic ally of China, in terms of real politik," said Khan. "It's a counter-weight to India, and it's a counterweight to the U.S. interests in the region."
(Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani and John Chalmers in Singapore and Rebecca Conway in Islamabad. editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
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