Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Something that's bothering me, though, that I could use a little advice on, is China's ties to Pakistan. China needs Pakistan as a counterbalance to India's emerging regional power but China also has problems with Muslim separatists in its western provinces. Pakistan can't seem to control its own extremist elements so I'm not sure how much they could do to help reign in and/or suppress China's increasingly militant Muslim minorities. That said, I see a China-Pakistan cooperative alliance as being more likely than a China-India one. Your thoughts?
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In the same way that civil wars can be some of the most bitter conflicts, intra-religious conflict tends to get really, really nasty. I know most readers here will already know this, I'm just putting this forward as a reminder.
Within Islam there are the two broad categories of Sunni and Shia, and myriad other sects and denominations. Most of the Muslim peoples of western China are, broadly speaking, Sunnis and belong to the Turkic language group. The majority of Pakistanis are also Sunni, with a sizable minority of Shiites and a whole bunch of other sects including the Ahmadiyya and Quranists. Pakistanis are mostly Urdu speakers.
So I guess the Pakistanis could help open dialogue on a majority religion basis with the western Chinese Muslim communities (Sunni clerics meeting with Sunni clerics, cultural exchanges etc), but linguistically and culturally they don't have a huge amount in common other than their religious beliefs. Actually I don't know whether those shared religious beliefs would promote Pakistani assistance to the Chinese government to keep things calm on the western frontiers, or hinder them.