ANALYSING NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES TO THE CHINA-PAKISTAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP AFTER CPEC

Abstract

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was launched in 2015 as a connectivity and infrastructure-financing project; a decade on, it has become the site of one of the most consequential non-traditional security (NTS) tests the China-Pakistan strategic partnership has faced since diplomatic relations began in 1951. This article first highlights the main non-traditional security threats that have arisen in the post-CPEC era and then analyses their impact on the depth, breadth and durability of bilateral cooperation. It then assesses the policy responses by Pakistan and China. The resurgence of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Baloch ethno-nationalist insurgency, non-violent societal contestation in Gwadar, the commercialization of Chinese debt and climate-related threats to infrastructure, alongside a still inadequate digital-security literature, yield a multi-layered and mutually reinforcing threat environment, according to the article, drawing on Complex Interdependence Theory and Non-Traditional Security Theory, as well as qualitative, theory-informed process tracing, thematic analysis, and triangulation across documentary, journalistic and 2026 peer-reviewed sources. This landscape has caused tensions, but not conflicts, in bilateral cooperation, which is best understood as high sensitivity and relatively low vulnerability dependency driven by the structural dependence of Pakistan on Chinese capital as the only alternative is not pluralist. Terrorist threats are securitised and highly prioritised in the policy response, while drivers of insecurity related to debt and environmental and digital drivers are comparatively under-addressed. The article concludes with suggestions based on facts for the Pakistan and Chinese policymakers in the second phase of the corridor, CPEC 2.0.