ABSTRACT
The China-Pakistan relationship counterbalances the negative effects of Pakistan's relations with India and the United States. The extent to which Islamabad and Beijing portray each other as friends remains a puzzle. The chapter looks at the bilateral relation through the perspective of China as an alternative dominant socializer to the United States, thereby using China's rise to superpower as point of entry. The analysis of China as a socializing agent in the Asia-Pacific demonstrates that the Chinese role process is aimed at shaping relations susceptible to its growing influence. The chapter considers mutually constitutive discursive or behavioral tools underpinning the China-Pakistan socialization process: China's norm-making through the expansion of a Chinese-inspired model of interstate relations; Chinese-based interstate relationality built on the discourse of sovereignty; and China's redefinition of social interstate relations through patronage politics. Focusing only on their NRCs highlights a high degree of incompatibility. Yet, changes in role conceptions and expectations alter this result toward increased compatibility. In fact, the chapter demonstrates that Pakistan and China are altering their role definition in terms that are not only merely acceptable by the other, but that can effectively reinforce the other's NRCs.
