How Pakistan became China’s indispensable intermediary

For most of the past decade, this logic—an expensive hedge against a contingency that might never arrive—has been constrained by the formidable engineering challenge of pushing a pipeline across the Karakoram and by Gwadar's still-incomplete oil-handling capacity. Critics dismissed the pipeline as economically unsustainable.

The US-Israeli war on Iran can change the calculus. The contingency the corridor was built to ensure against—a hostile closure of the maritime route from the Gulf to the Western Pacific—is no longer theoretical. It is now the operating condition of the world economy.

The most striking confirmation of CPEC's strategic value came not from Beijing but from Islamabad, via a customs order. On 25 April, Pakistan's Commerce Ministry brought into immediate effect the 'Transit of Goods through the Territory of Pakistan Order 2026', formally legalising the movement of third-country cargo from China and other parts of Eurasia across Pakistani territory into Iran. The order activated six overland routes running from Gwadar, Karachi, and Port Qasim to the Iranian border, with the Gwadar–Gabd crossing offering transit times of just two to three hours. 

Critical relief

The timing is not subtle. With the US blockade in force from 13 April, some 3,000 Iran-bound containers had piled up in Pakistani ports. Islamabad's order gave that stranded cargo a land route around the naval cordon. In effect, Pakistan provided Tehran with an economic pressure-relief valve, shifting Iranian trade from a predominantly maritime system to a hybrid sea-land network built to withstand blockade. 

So has Iranian oil been flowing overland through Pakistan to China? The short answer is that the infrastructure for it now exists, and the political will appears present, even if the volumes remain opaque. For now, the activated corridors carry more rice, meat, and baby formula more than crude—pipelines are not laid in a month—and analysts caution that it remains unclear how much Iran has actually moved since the blockade began. 

But the broader pattern is unmistakable. Iran's shadow tanker fleet continues ship-to-ship transfers bound largely for China. A China-Iran rail corridor through Central Asia is compressing delivery times the sea can no longer guarantee. Pakistan's transit order is one node in an emerging overland system designed to bypass the US maritime blockade. That system runs through Pakistani territory, and the man who negotiated in Beijing knows its value. 

The reasons Sharif began his trip in Hangzhou is worth dwelling on. It reveals what the second phase of CPEC is meant to be. Hangzhou is no longer simply the picturesque home of the West Lake and Alibaba. It has become, in the space of a few years, China's pre-eminent deep-tech hub: home to AI company DeepSeek and the cradle of the country's so-called 'Six Little Dragons', a cluster of firms spanning AI, robotics, gaming, brain-machine interfaces, and spatial computing. Together, they reflect the spillover of Alibaba's ecosystem, Zhejiang University's talent pipeline, and a local government willing to pour billions into hard-tech venture funding. If Shenzhen is China's hardware capital, Hangzhou has become its software and AI capital.

The original CPEC was built around roads, ports, and power plants—the physical scaffolding of an industrialising economy. The pivot to Hangzhou signals an upgraded layer: digital infrastructure, data connectivity, AI, and the platforms built atop the physical. With Pakistan's minister of information technology, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, joining the delegation, the message was clear: Pakistan aspires to be more than a land transit route for Chinese goods. It aims to become a key participant in China's digital and technological order. 

For China, the appeal is equally strong. Beijing's deep-tech champions face tightening access to Western markets and a growing imperative to find customers, partners, and data ecosystems beyond the reach of the US technology order. A digitally integrated Pakistan—with Chinese cloud infrastructure, fintech rails, telecoms and surveillance systems, and AI models trained and deployed in a friendly jurisdiction of 240 million people—would extend the technological ecosystem incubated in Hangzhou across a strategically vital region. The physical corridor moves oil and containers; the digital corridor moves data, standards, and technological systems. 

Historic parallels

This is not the first time Pakistan has leveraged its unusual diplomatic position to shape a geopolitical realignment. In 1971, at the height of the Cold War, Pakistan secretly facilitated Henry Kissinger's trip to Beijing, laying the groundwork for the opening of diplomatic relations with a People's Republic of China the US did not yet recognise. As Kissinger's aide, Winston Lord, later put it, Pakistan had the advantage of being "a friend to both sides". The parallel is imperfect, but the underlying asset is familiar: Pakistan's ability to maintain working relationships with actors unable or unwilling to speak directly to one another. In 1971, those actors were Washington and Beijing. In 2026, they are Washington, Tehran, the Gulf monarchies, and Beijing. 

Pakistan's emergence as a credible broker in this conflict was neither foreordained nor purely a function of its own diplomacy. It was, in part, a Chinese project. When the war erupted, Beijing and Islamabad jointly advanced a five-point peace proposal, while China intervened at the last-minute, helping push Tehran toward the two-week ceasefire that took effect in early April. Organised by Pakistan and negotiated through what became known as the Islamabad Talks, the ceasefire ultimately collapsed, triggering the US blockade. Yet the process established Pakistan as the venue through which Washington and Tehran could, however briefly, be brought into the same room.

Why this arrangement suits Beijing is straightforward. China needs the war to end—or at least to de-escalate enough to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—but it cannot be seen as the broker delivering the settlement. To do so would risk reinforcing American suspicions of Beijing's alignment with Tehran and complicate China's effort to present itself as a stabilising actor rather than a partisan one. 

Pakistan offers Beijing a form of strategic distance: the ability to shape the conflict's trajectory while preserving plausible neutrality. Sharif's visit was, in effect, a coordination meeting—a chance to align on what comes next as Washington and Tehran continue to hint at progress while remaining deadlocked over Iran's nuclear programme and the question of tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. 

Broader pattern

A broader geopolitical pattern is taking shape. In the first five months of 2026, roughly a dozen heads of state and government have passed through Beijing. The sequence is striking. President Donald Trump arrived for a summit on 14-15 May. Russia's Vladimir President Putin followed days later for a state visit on 19-20 May. The back-to-back hosting of American and Russian leaders within a single week is almost unheard of in the post-Cold War era. Shortly before Trump's visit, Iran's foreign minister travelled to Beijing for the first time since the war began. France's Emmanuel Macron came in December, the UK's Keir Starmer in January, while leaders from South Korea, Spain, Ireland, Canada, Germany, and Finland have also made the trip. Now Sharif. 

At minimum, the diplomatic revolving door points to a shift in geopolitical gravity. The simple fact that global leaders—adversaries and partners alike—now pass through Beijing to address pressing international issues signals a redistribution of diplomatic influence. The US can still break things more decisively than any other power. But it is increasingly less the place one turns to fix them, whether in trade or security. Sharif's visit was, in its own way, a vote for this new reality. 

Step back from the deal sheets and the contours of a Middle East and an Asia being quietly redrawn come into view. The US retains unmatched military power. It can close Iranian ports and pound the Strait of Hormuz from the air, but it has discovered that military dominance does not necessarily translate into the ability to end a war on favourable terms. Its allies, meanwhile, are increasingly reluctant to underwrite its choices. Spain refused to let the US use its air bases. The Gulf states are reaching past Washington to Beijing. 

China, conversely, has discovered the limits of economic weight unaccompanied by the political and military instruments to protect it. For all its reserves and its colossal purchasing power, Beijing could not keep its own energy lifeline open. 

A multipolar wager

Pakistan's wager is that, in a multipolar world, the state that can speak to all sides—and control the land bridge when sea lanes close—is ultimately more valuable than a great power aligned too narrowly with one camp. 

Fifty-five years ago, a Pakistani leader put an American on a secret plane to Beijing and helped remake the world. Last month, another Pakistani leader flew to China openly to remind his hosts that the geography that made Pakistan indispensable then still makes it indispensable now.