Munir and Dar meet China's Liu Haixing in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, pledging a deeper Pakistan-China partnership
Field Marshal Asim Munir met Chinese Communist Party official Liu Haixing at GHQ Rawalpindi and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar held a separate bilateral meeting with him in Islamabad on Monday, with both sides pledging to strengthen the All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership.
Pakistan's top military and civilian leadership held separate meetings on Monday with a senior Chinese Communist Party official, turning a visit that began as a diplomatic arrival into a day of substantive talks on security, bilateral relations and the future of the Pakistan-China partnership. Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of the Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir met Liu Haixing at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, while Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar held a bilateral meeting with him in Islamabad.
Liu, minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, is the official responsible for the ruling party's external relations. He arrived in Islamabad on Sunday for his first official visit to Pakistan, at Dar's invitation, and was due to call on the country's leadership and co-chair a high-level event with Dar on Monday. The meetings on Monday were therefore the working core of the visit, rather than its ceremonial opening.
At General Headquarters, the discussion centred on what the military's media wing described as evolving regional and international security dynamics, alongside bilateral relations and matters of mutual interest. The setting mattered: Rawalpindi is the seat of Pakistan's military leadership, and a meeting there with a party official who manages China's external political ties signals that the relationship is being handled at both the state and party levels.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations statement, Munir underlined the historic and time-tested bond between Pakistan and China. He stressed the value of sustained high-level engagement, stronger institutional linkages and expanded cooperation across areas of mutual interest, a formulation that points to regular contact between institutions rather than one-off visits.
Liu, for his part, appreciated Pakistan's contributions to regional peace and stability and expressed confidence that the longstanding strategic partnership could be advanced further. That exchange of appreciation is a familiar feature of Pakistan-China meetings, but it took place this time against a much tenser regional backdrop, with war continuing between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, and Gulf shipping and energy routes under severe strain.
Separately in Islamabad, Dar's meeting with Liu followed a similar pattern of greetings and reaffirmation. Liu conveyed greetings from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which Dar warmly reciprocated, and Dar conveyed warm greetings to Chinese President Xi Jinping on behalf of Pakistan's leadership. The Foreign Office said Dar reaffirmed Pakistan's continued commitment to further strengthening what both countries call the All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership.
The two sides also discussed ways to enhance cultural ties and people-to-people exchanges, and expressed their resolve to maintain close coordination and carry forward the positive momentum in bilateral relations. The emphasis on cultural and people-to-people links is significant because much of the public attention on Pakistan-China ties focuses on infrastructure and security, while officials on both sides have increasingly presented exchanges between societies as a way of anchoring the partnership beyond government.
The visit falls in a landmark year for the relationship. Pakistan and China are marking 75 years of diplomatic relations, established in May 1951, while the Communist Party of China is marking its 105th founding anniversary. Dar met 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, and Monday's meetings build directly on that earlier contact.
Recent steps have given that party-to-party channel concrete content. Pakistan and China recently signed an agreement to operationalise a green channel at the Sost-Khunjerab border for agricultural and allied products to facilitate bilateral trade, linking Gilgit-Baltistan with China's Xinjiang region through the highest paved international border crossing in the world. Last week, the two countries also launched the China-Pakistan Information Corridor, based on four pillars covering media, business and enterprises, think tanks, and culture and tourism.
What happens next will depend on whether Monday's political and security discussions translate into follow-up work in the weeks ahead. Possible areas to watch include further high-level exchanges, progress on corridor projects and trade facilitation, and continued coordination on regional security, particularly as China also engages other parties in the Middle East. For now, the meetings themselves are the development: Pakistan's military chief and its foreign minister have both now sat down with Beijing's visiting party envoy on the same day, and both sides have publicly committed to taking the partnership further.
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