Prime minister of Pakistan, Yusuf Raza GIllani once described Pakistans relationship with china.

Pak-China friendship is higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey. In a press release he also promised China that your friends are our friends, your enemies are our enemies and your security is our security. First of all Pakistan is not the centre of the world even though those of us who cover it tend to think it is. And China is a big country, setting itself on a path to outstrip the United States. It pays far less attention to India than India does to China, let alone becoming as obsessed with Pakistans problems as Pakistan is with casting China in the role of rescuer. Secondly, Pakistan has constantly hyped the support it is likely to get from China for decades. At the time, Pakistan-China relations were riding high. China had just imposed a degrading defeat on India in a 1962 border war. Pakistan had then, in Indian eyes, added offense to wound by reaching a conditional border agreement with China. Yet during the 1965 war, Pakistans expectations of Chinese help were proved tragically wrong. At the time of the 1971 war with India a crisis bigger than the one faced by Pakistan today China gave no military support when Pakistan was split in two with Indian backing to carve out the new country of Bangladesh. The United States gave little real help, either, beyond deploying the 7th Fleet to the Bay of Bengal - something that is bitterly remembered by Pakistan but somehow Chinas own record was forgotten. Indeed history has a rack of books all stacked up in favor of the argument that Pakistan has consistently over-estimated the support from China and it is hard to believe the Pakistan government does not know this already. If it had any doubts it would have cleared these up when the government first sought Chinese financial help in 2008 only to be rejected and sent packing to the IMF - a decision which left Pakistan more vulnerable to U.S. influence. And even without the historical evidence, it would be clear that Chinas concerns about Pakistan-based Islamist militants focused on its own Xinjiang province would mean that Beijing would be unlikely to come out all guns blazing in defense of Pakistans right to tolerate or support groups like the Haqqani network. In other words, it is reasonable to assume the Pakistan government knows full well that there are limits to Chinese support in its confrontation with the United States. And that by extension its higher than mountains, deeper than oceans talk is designed for a domestic audience. And this is where it gets even more interesting. What does the governments public language about China tell us about Pakistan and predominantly its civilian-military relations?

Step back for a moment and consider that Mullens comments have created a huge nationalistic backlash in Pakistan. Whether by design or default, the biggest beneficiary of this backlash is the Pakistan army as the one institution which can defend the country against any American military attack. So what would a civilian government seeking to assert its influence over foreign policy and adopt a more pragmatic approach do? 1) Encourage the hawks, the populists and jingoists, and the anti-American right by insisting that Pakistan has a superpower ally of its own which will defend it down to the deepest ocean and up to the highest mountain? 2) Avoid hyperbole in the interests of convincing the people of Pakistan of the limits of Chinese support and the need to work somehow with the United States? The visit by Chinas Meng probably told us more than we realize. It did not tell us very much about what China will do if past history is anything to go by it will do very little and try to keep itself out of the fray. But it did tell us rather a lot about Pakistan and the likelihood of the countrys civilian and military leaders closing ranks in the face of American pressure.