Seventy-Five Years of an Unlikely Bond: How China and Pakistan Built a Durable, Costly Alliance

Over 75 years, Pakistan and China have forged a durable, often transactional partnership rooted in a shared rival (India), spanning from the 1963 Shaksgam Valley land transfer and covert nuclear cooperation to the Karakoram Highway and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a bond that remains strategically vital for Beijing but economically and security‑wise costly for Pakistan.