Senior Chinese Communist Party official Liu Haixing in Islamabad for first visit, co-chairing high-level event with Dar today
Liu Haixing, minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China, arrived in Islamabad on Sunday for his first official visit to Pakistan and is due to call on the country’s leadership and co-chair a high-level event with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday.
A senior official of the Communist Party of China is in Islamabad for talks with Pakistan’s leadership, in a visit that puts party-to-party diplomacy alongside the usual government-to-government channels between the two countries. Liu Haixing, minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived in the Pakistani capital on Sunday for his first official visit to Pakistan, at the invitation of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Office, Liu was received on arrival by Senator Anusha Rahman Khan and Dr Mohammad Faisal, Additional Secretary for Asia Pacific at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During his stay he will call on Pakistan’s leadership, and on Monday he is scheduled to co-chair a high-level event with Dar in Islamabad. The Foreign Office described the visit as part of the ongoing high-level and party-to-party exchanges between Pakistan and China, reflecting what both sides call their “All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership”.
The distinction in Liu’s title matters for understanding the visit. While Foreign Minister Wang Yi handles China’s official state-to-state diplomacy, Liu heads the CPC department that manages the ruling party’s relations with foreign political parties and political organisations. He took up the post in September 2025, and this is his first official visit to Pakistan since his appointment. The Express Tribune, reporting on the visit on Monday, framed it as Beijing pushing its relationship with Pakistan beyond government channels and into institutional, party-level engagement.
The timing gives the visit an anniversary significance. Pakistan and China are marking 75 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations, which date to 21 May 1951, and the Foreign Office statement placed the visit in that landmark year for bilateral ties. The visit also follows a meeting between Dar and Liu in Beijing in January, when the two sides reviewed party-to-party exchanges, regional developments and progress on projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
CPEC remains the practical backbone of the relationship, and it is likely to feature in the discussions even though no new project announcement has been published for this visit. China is Pakistan’s largest trading partner, and reporting on the visit notes more than $65 billion in investment pledged through road, infrastructure and development projects under CPEC. The corridor, which links western China to Pakistan’s Gwadar port, has been the centrepiece of economic cooperation between the two countries for a decade, and party-level contact is one of the ways Beijing and Islamabad keep that cooperation moving between set-piece state visits.
The visit also comes days after a separate step in bilateral cooperation: Pakistan and China established an 18-outlet news exchange network and a dedicated fact-checking mechanism under a newly launched information corridor, as Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced. That development, reported alongside Liu’s arrival, shows the relationship expanding into media and information cooperation at the same time as the political track is being deepened through the party channel.
For Pakistan, the visit arrives at a crowded moment in its diplomacy. The country is managing tensions with Afghanistan, where it has said it would welcome US help in facilitating talks only if Kabul takes verifiable action against militant groups, and it is watching closely as Qatar-mediated talks over the Strait of Hormuz move to a new stage. In that setting, a visible show of closeness with Beijing — Pakistan’s most consistent strategic partner — carries weight beyond the formal agenda of any single meeting.
For China, the party-to-party channel offers something state diplomacy alone cannot: a direct relationship with Pakistan’s political class that survives changes of government and ministerial reshuffles. By sending the head of its International Department rather than a foreign ministry official, Beijing is signalling that it wants institutional depth in the relationship, not only transactional deals. That approach fits a pattern in which China has deepened party links with partners across Asia, Africa and Latin America in recent years.
What has not been published so far is any agreement, figure or project attached specifically to this visit, and that is normal for party-channel diplomacy, where the value often lies in coordination and signalling rather than signed deals. Readers should therefore not expect a headline investment figure from Monday’s event itself; the test of the visit will be in what the two sides say afterwards about party cooperation, CPEC coordination and regional issues, and in whether follow-up exchanges are announced.
What happens next will become clearer after Monday’s high-level event, which Liu is co-chairing with Dar. Any joint statement, or any readout from Liu’s calls on Pakistan’s leadership, will show whether the visit produced concrete next steps on party exchanges, economic cooperation or regional coordination. For now, the visit itself is the news: a first official trip by the CPC’s international chief, hosted at the invitation of Pakistan’s foreign minister, in the 75th anniversary year of a partnership both sides describe as all-weather.
More in Pakistan News
PakistanSialkot police book TikToker ‘Mr Pattlo’ and 53 others after stampede at mehndi event kills two, injures 18
PakistanLahore High Court orders Noreen Niazi meeting with her daughters on Tuesday and summons Lahore DC in person for 4 November
Pakistan