China has called on Pakistan to protect Chinese workers after a resurgence in militant violence that has targeted some of Beijing’s $60bn of investments in the country.
Two Chinese engineers were killed this month in a bomb attack by ethnic separatists on a convoy leaving Karachi’s international airport. Those in the convoy were employees of the Port Qasim Electric Power Company, a power plant that is one of the biggest Chinese investments in Pakistan.
The attack came just days before Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrived in Islamabad on Monday for a bilateral visit and Shanghai Cooperation Council summit.
The Karachi attack is the latest in a string of attacks that has strengthened calls from Chinese officials for its intelligence agencies to play a more proactive role abroad in protecting the country’s citizens.
The Chinese embassy in Islamabad has called on Pakistan to “severely punish the perpetrators, and take all necessary measures to protect the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects in Pakistan”.
The Port Qasim plant is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, one of the largest investment schemes launched under the auspices of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road programme.
China’s spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, said it expected Pakistan to “honour its security commitments” in regard to CPEC.
The attack also coincided with Pakistan’s efforts to seek debt restructuring with Chinese energy investors, which have lent billions of dollars since 2013 to prop up the South Asian country’s power sector.
Awais Leghari, Pakistan’s power minister, said in an interview with a local TV channel on Friday that the killings had caused “some delay” in negotiations with Beijing.
China is Pakistan’s largest external creditor.
The Balochistan Liberation Army, the largest of a number of ethnic separatist groups in the mineral-rich province that has billions of dollars in Chinese Belt and Road projects, claimed it carried out the attack.
“This is a warning not only to China but also to any nation or investor in the world who tries to set foot in Balochistan during Pakistan’s occupation,” the group said in a statement posted to their Telegram channel.
“We will target all Chinese economic interests, investments and military installations, knowing that there will be no safe haven for them on Balochistan soil.”
Militant groups including separatists in the southwestern Balochistan province and the Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks throughout Pakistan, which has become a hotbed of terrorism activity after the withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan in 2021 left a security vacuum.
More than 1,500 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan last year, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
In an online post, the MSS attributed the increase in terrorist activity in Pakistan to what Xi describes as “changes unseen in a century”, interpreted by scholars as Beijing’s code for the relative decline of western power globally.
In comments carried by mainland Chinese media, the MSS reinforced calls by its head, the minister of state security Chen Yixin, for China to do more to protect its citizens and assets abroad against terrorism, implying a more active role for its agents in places such as Pakistan.
National security agencies should focus “on areas where overseas interests are concentrated, strengthen early warning of terrorist attack risks, strengthen emergency response . . . and effectively safeguard the safety of overseas citizens, institutions, and projects”, the MSS said.
In March, a suicide bombing killed five Chinese workers near the Dasu dam, the country’s largest hydropower plant, in north-western Pakistan, and Baloch separatists invaded the south-western Gwadar port, a flagship CPEC project, and killed two Pakistani security officials before the assault was stopped.
A female suicide bomber from Balochistan in 2022 killed three Chinese language teachers at Karachi’s Confucius Institute, while nine Chinese engineers were among the 13 killed in an explosion on a bus en route to Dasu in 2021.
The thousands of Chinese working on project sites throughout Pakistan are cloistered in heavily guarded housing blocks, with their movements restricted to protect them from attacks that would further erode Beijing’s appetite to invest in Pakistan.
“The terrorists are trying to harass China into reducing its involvement in Pakistan,” planning minister Ahsan Iqbal told the Financial Times in June. Islamabad alleges that militant groups targeting Chinese workers find a haven in Afghanistan, and that some operate with the consent of the regime in Kabul.
“This attack has shaken Chinese confidence in the Pakistani system, which neither has credibility nor demonstrated capability to protect Chinese citizens,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a former senator and chair of the Pakistan-China Institute, an Islamabad-based think-tank.
A mechanism was needed to ensure Chinese investment continued to flow, “including a joint Pakistani-Chinese intelligence and counterterrorism partnership”, he added.