The inaugural meeting of the Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission (BJC) was hosted by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad on 16-17 September.[1] It marked the operationalisation of a mechanism under Article 45 of the 2013 China-Pakistan Agreement on the Boundary Management System.[2] The 2013 Agreement is itself based on the March 1963 China-Pakistan Agreement on the Boundary Between China's Sinkiang and the Contiguous Areas.[3]
The 1963 Agreement provided for a Joint Boundary Demarcation Commission whose job it was to determine “the location and alignment of the boundary… as far as possible by joint survey on the ground” given that Article 2, Section III stated, “the maps of the two sides are not fully identical in their representation of topographical features”.[4] This task having been completed,[5] the 2013 Agreement moved on to issues of border management. The BJC “covered wide-ranging matters related to border management and cooperation, including cross-border coordination, movement of goods and people, joint border survey and people-to-people linkages”.[6]
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) responded to the news of the BJC meeting stating, “There is no boundary between Pakistan and China” and that “the so-called Joint Commission” was “without any legal basis”. It declared its opposition to “attempts to alter the status of these occupied territories or legitimise illegal occupation”.[7] However, at least one Pakistani scholar, states explicitly that the "activation of the BJC does not resolve the wider India-Pakistan or India-China territorial disputes", suggesting that there was no change to the status quo. The agenda, rather, is "overwhelmingly practical: border management, surveys, trade, movement and connectivity". The Pakistani report goes on to note that "the more useful interpretation may be that Pakistan and China are seeking to separate practical border management from the larger political disputes that neither side expects this commission to resolve." [8]
However, it is in precisely this ordinariness, this seeming bureaucratization of a sensitive territorial issue, that the significance of the meeting of the BJC lies.
To start with the question of timing – why now? Since the BJC has been operationalised after more than a decade in abeyance and given that China is the stronger power, it must be assumed that it is the Chinese who finally decided to move ahead with the Commission. And so it must be Chinese interests that explain the timing.
One, it is – as the Pakistanis also say – an effort to ensure a degree of institutionalisation to deal with “practical issues”[9] arising in exchanges and movement across their borders and to “set out the framework for future cooperation”.[10] However, for the Chinese, such institutionalisation or formalisation also has to do with the fact that Pakistan's other borders – with Afghanistan, Iran and India – have all seen various degrees of strife and conflict in the past few years. Thus, the convening of the BJC should not be taken to mean that Pakistan will find cross-border exchanges easy. Even with its ‘all-weather friend’, China will primarily be concerned about security issues at its borders.
Two, the BJC also possibly reflects an exercise in expanded Chinese engagement with Pakistan – or even a form of pressure on it – at a time when Islamabad is expanding its horizons with the Mecca Pact and making itself popular and useful in Washington DC in the wake of US-Iran conflict. In other words, it is another opportunity to remind Pakistan that China is near and its other friends are either not quite so or further away.
More important than the timing, however, are the larger implications of this move. There are at least four that matter to India.
First, the 1963 Agreement was careful to constantly qualify "the contiguous areas" to Sinkiang (Xinjiang) with the expression "the defense of which is under the actual control of Pakistan", which was a way of reflecting the situation on the ground but also of acknowledging that these areas were disputed between India and Pakistan. In fact, Article 6 of the Agreement did make a provision for renegotiating it if the Kashmir dispute were to be settled in India’s favour. Thus, the 2013 Sino-Pak Agreement and the BJC, now, provide additional confirmation of what has been evident for some time – that China supports the Pakistani position on the Kashmir dispute and that it is not a neutral party as it has frequently claimed to be.
Second, given the slow, difficult road to normalization in ties with India, following Chinese transgressions across the Line of Actual Control in 2020, the BJC with Pakistan offers an easy and immediate opportunity to highlight China’s seeming reasonableness in the management of its border affairs with other countries.
Third, however, and with greater longer-term implications for India, both China’s BJC with Pakistan and several rounds of renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh are part of the same process of ‘lawfare’ – of promoting its claims through legislation and/or other forms of institutionalisation. This a long-running and extensive Chinese exercise and its potential consequence for India has already been noted in Chinese online commentary.[11] Given India’s limited ability to promote its narratives abroad give greater Chinese diplomatic capacity as well as outreach via both traditional and social media, there is increasing risk that China’s positions will become the more familiar and visible to international audiences.
Finally, given that China would have known that this was a sensitive matter for India, to convene the first meeting of the BJC so soon after the seeming bonhomie between their leaders at the BRICS summit in New Delhi and despite the first joint statement between their Special Representatives on the Boundary Dispute in several years, is to also signal just how it prioritises the relationship with India. China has indicated that it will not bend or suddenly begin to accede to Indian demands on the boundary dispute or economic engagement whatever the optics in New Delhi.
Originally published as Jabin T. Jacob. 2026. ‘China-Pak border move has India implications’, The Tribune, 29 September.
(The article appeared in The Tribune as part of an arrangement with the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies.)
[1]https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/pakistan-china-boundary-joint-commission
[2]https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/tytj_674911/tyfg_674913/201803/t20180329_9867690.shtml
[3]https://www.jstor.org/stable/2196119
[4]https://www.jstor.org/stable/2196119
[5]https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/tytj_674911/tyfg_674913/201803/t20180329_9867690.shtml
[6]https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/pakistan-china-boundary-joint-commission
[7]https://www.mea.gov.in/response-to-queries?dtl/41803/Official_Spokespersons_response_to_media_queries_on_the_socalled_PakistanChina_Boundary_Joint_Commission
[8]https://www.ips.org.pk/pakistan-china-boundary-joint-commission/
[9]https://www.dawn.com/news/2030508; https://www.sohu.com/a/1078994975_122105234
[10]https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/pakistan-china-boundary-joint-commission