GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Of all the regional actors engaged in Afghanistan and Pakistan, China's role is perhaps the most opaque. Alternately coaxed as a potential savior and condemned as a parasitic free-rider, the transatlantic allies have not yet worked out how to harness Beijing's undoubted influence and economic clout. This is not altogether surprising: China's motives are complex and at times contradictory. But if the United States and Europe play their hand well, an opening exists - Beijing's security calculus is changing in ways that are increasingly favorable to greater cooperation.

The potential benefits are clear. China is one of the very few nations with the capacity and risk-tolerance to make multi-billion dollar investments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Projects such as the Aynak copper mine and the expansion of the Karakorum Highway are only the most visible. From telecommunications in Afghanistan to power-generation in Pakistan, China?s involvement in major economic sectors is already substantial. Ever more importantly, China's close, longstanding relationship with Pakistan, including in sensitive areas of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and military programs, give it a unique level of influence, insight, and trust. On the rare occasions when Beijing exercises its leverage, Islamabad acts.

But China is torn between competing imperatives. While being uncomfortable with the U.S. and NATO presence so close to its borders, Beijing is at the same time fearful of a precipitous Western withdrawal and quietly happy to see the United States bogged down militarily. Notionally supportive of international efforts to combat extremists, China is still wary of provoking them and is single-mindedly focused on Uighur groups such as ETIM rather than the broader transnational terrorist threat. China is also an inveterate hedger. In the absence of a winning U.S. strategy, Beijing sees no reason to make an enemy of the Afghan Taliban, however unpleasant it finds them. The lack of clarity about future U.S. policy in Afghanistan makes a wait-and-see approach the easy default option. And every upsurge in violence in its restive northwestern region, Xinjiang, only heightens Beijing's sense of caution about the reactions of its own Muslim population.

China's broader dealings with Pakistan are equally tricky to navigate. This is a relationship in which the Chinese military plays an unusually important and not especially progressive role. While Beijing is eager to emphasize the unchanging nature of its friendship, in practice its relations with the Pakistan People's Party, and President Zardari in particular, have been cool. It doesn't take much to prompt Chinese officials to express their longing for Musharraf and military rule. China's willingness to provide economic support to the current civilian government is correspondingly diminished. Moreover, despite Chinese anxieties about the risks of Indo-Pakistani conflict - and willingness to deal constructively with crises such as the Mumbai terror attacks - Beijing still benefits from tensions on the subcontinent that keep the Indian military diverted to its western borders and pinned down in Kashmir.

The combination of these considerations with China's innate foreign policy conservatism would seem to be a recipe for inaction. But China's growing concerns about stability on its periphery are changing the way it perceives its interests.

Chinese investment projects in the region are now important not simply in scale but in their strategic nature. The Gwadar port and the linked prospect of an energy corridor to China's northwest, for example, are valuable well beyond their economic worth. Yet all of these projects - including the much-touted Aynak mine - are go-slow until Chinese confidence about stability has returned. The Pakistani military is no longer able to ensure that Chinese interests are given a privileged and protected status. Whether it comes to attacks on Chinese assets or the kidnappings and killings of Chinese workers, the threats have been growing as the situation in Pakistan has deteriorated. China has become a target for groups well beyond ETIM and Baluchi nationalists ever since its involvement in the Red Mosque incident. Political tensions with the Pakistani government over these issues have grown markedly in the past year.

Even more worryingly, since the riots in Urumqi, China has faced warning signs that it is becoming a first-order target for transnational terror groups. While Beijing could be dismissive of the AQIM statement in July threatening Chinese overseas personnel, this month's video from a senior Pakistani-based Al Qaeda figure, Abu Yahya al-Libi, urging a holy war in Xinjiang, is harder to ignore. The threat to China's domestic security is starting to expand well beyond a tiny group of Uighur extremists. China is also profoundly worried about Pakistan's long-term security situation. It has become one of the only countries where Beijing has undertaken crisis contingency planning for scenarios ranging from state collapse to loose nukes. And all of their planning makes one thing clear: China needs to coordinate effectively with other major powers if its interests are to be protected. It is no longer clear that pursuit of a narrow set of bilateral objectives is the best Chinese strategy.

Beijing has responded positively to the new U.S. administration's regional outreach initiative. Nevertheless, eliciting meaningful Chinese cooperation will be a slow process. China is still testing U.S. openness to involving it seriously in the future of the region rather than just episodic crisis management - and trying to gauge what level of pressure it will come under if it holds back. European efforts have so far been much weaker. While individual member states such as the U.K. and France have launched their own initiatives with China, Afghanistan and Pakistan have occupied a lowly role in EU-China discussions, and NATO contact with China is highly underdeveloped.

The existing efforts are also overly focused on Afghanistan. The value China can add and its sense of responsibility and anxiety about the situation in Pakistan are many times greater. While the results may not be swift, there is genuine scope over time to find ways of coordinating the targeting of economic and military support, political messages, strategies for dealing with extremist threats, and even some limited discussion of contingency planning. Beijing is reluctant to address Pakistan in multilateral forums or to risk creating perceptions of condominiums with the United States and the Europeans that may damage its close relationship. But the West will in any case benefit more from Chinese efforts that are seen to be bilateral, such as the recent political and practical support given by Beijing to the Pakistani military's campaign in Swat.

If it can be secured, the omens for cooperation are good. The last time China and the West were aligned against a common threat in Southwest Asia, Chinese arms and Chinese mules played their part in a famous victory. Can Deng Xiaoping's successors deliver again?