THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
A Political Analysis
When China and Pakistan issue a joint diplomatic statement, you can usually predict what it will say. True to form, their latest high-level meeting in Beijing ended with the same old script: demanding that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) step in to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, which they labeled a “leftover from history.”
It sounds professional and law-abiding on paper. But if you scratch beneath the surface, the sheer hypocrisy of both nations completely falls apart. Their joint statement is a masterclass in geopolitical double standards, selectively choosing which international laws to praise and which ones to completely tear up.
1. Conveniently Forgetting the Simla Agreement
The biggest elephant in the room is how Beijing and Islamabad treat past agreements. By screaming for the UN to intervene, both nations are trying to completely erase the 1972 Simla Agreement.
Signed by the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan after the 1971 war, the Simla Agreement is legally binding. Its core rule is incredibly simple: India and Pakistan explicitly promised to settle all their differences—including Kashmir—peacefully through direct, bilateral negotiations.
No third parties. No international courts. No UN intervention.
By running to the UN, Pakistan is openly violating its own historical commitment, and China is happily helping them cheat on their homework.
2. The Illegal Land Giveaway
Pakistan’s loudest argument is that Jammu and Kashmir is a “disputed territory” and that India has no right to change its administrative status. But basic logic reveals a massive contradiction: If a piece of land is disputed, you do not have the legal authority to carve it up and give it away to a third party.
Yet, that is exactly what Pakistan did. In 1963, Pakistan signed over the Shaksgam Valley (more than 5,000 square kilometers of Kashmiri territory) to China just to cement their military friendship.
Furthermore, Pakistan has allowed China to build the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—complete with permanent highways, mega-dams, and military transit routes—directly through Gilgit-Baltistan.
The Double Standard: When India builds roads or changes local administrative laws in its own territory, Pakistan calls it an “illegal occupation.” But when Pakistan hands over thousands of square kilometers of the exact same “disputed” region to China for concrete factories and trade routes, they call it “economic progress.”
3. China’s Hidden Footprint in Kashmir
China loves to play the role of a neutral, peace-loving superpower looking out for international law. But China isn’t a neutral outsider in the Kashmir issue—it is a direct occupier.
During the 1962 war, China seized control of Aksai Chin, a massive chunk of land that historically and structurally belonged to the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.
If Beijing genuinely believes that the fate of the entire 1947 princely state of Jammu and Kashmir needs to be decided by old UN resolutions, is China prepared to put Aksai Chin back on the negotiating table? Absolutely not. China treats its own captured territory as a permanent, unquestionable reality, while demanding that India’s territories be subjected to international scrutiny.
The Bottom Line
International law is supposed to be an absolute rulebook, not a buffet where you only pick the dishes you like.
You cannot boycott international court rulings that don’t suit you (like China did with the 2016 South China Sea tribunal), illegally build highways through contested lands, permanently occupy territories won in war, and then turn around with a straight face and demand that the UN step in to enforce international law against your neighbor.
The joint statement out of Beijing isn’t about justice, history, or the UN Charter. It is a calculated shield designed to protect a massive, illegal infrastructure project and distract the world from a very simple truth: When it comes to Kashmir, China and Pakistan are guilty of the exact same actions they are trying to accuse India of doing.
Reference
1.https://youtu.be/Xy-5s4PIeFc?si=ADRYV7MB82qrjta_
