Beijing: China is in a state of shock after Pakistan turned down its request to open a security company in their country.

Islamabad has not made its objections public but Beijing is not hiding its unhappiness, reported a think tank, Policy Research Group (POREG).

According to sources, China had requested to set up a security company in Pakistan to protect its nationals working in the Islamic Republic from Islamist militants of all hues.

The request was sent to the government by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, however, the Interior Ministry has objected to the Chinese government's request. Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rana Sanaullah maintained that no other country can open a security company in Pakistan.

"Chinese confidence in Pakistan's security system and its ability to protect them and their projects is badly shaken as Senator Mushahid Hussain, Chairman of Pakistan's Senate Defence Committee has conceded on record recently," Valentin Popescu said in the POREG report.

"Whether Pakistani leadership likes to admit it or not, there is a sublime anti-China sentiment in the land of the pure as Pakistanis like to describe their country. It is not as widespread as the anti-American psyche, though," Popescu said.

"Probably, this dislike bordering on hatred is a manifestation against the Big Brother attitude of the US and China," he added.

He further said that the provocation for China to propose its own security arrangement in Pakistan was an attack near the University of Karachi's Confucius Institute on 26 April 2022, where three Chinese teachers lost their lives in the ghastly attack carried out by a woman suicide bomber.

"Punish the perpetrators," a Foreign Ministry spokesman thundered in Beijing. And demanded a scale-up of security for the Chinese nationals.

"Shehbaz Sharif, who took over reins of the country at the head of a multiparty coalition, just a fortnight before the Karachi attack, was rattled. So was the military establishment, which is the real power centre of the country," Popescu said.

"Both held out the assurance of stern action against the perpetrators. It did not cut any ice with China, going by the turn of events ending with the request 'for permission to set up a security company in Pakistan," Popescu added.

There are more than 1,000 Chinese nationals in Islamabad alone, attached to three dozen of projects, companies, and businesses, according to an official survey on the number of Chinese living in Pakistan.

"Hundreds of Chinese are working in Pakistan on a wide range of projects. One project, CPEC, is a multi-billion-dollar venture to lay an economic corridor from Xinjiang in Northwest China to the Balochistan coast in Pakistan. The Chinese workers and engineers have literally no security cover even in Karachi, which is Pakistan's showpiece city as its educational and business hub," Popescu said.

He further said that it is not that Pakistan does not care for the 'guests' from the land of its iron friend. It does. It has, in fact, raised a special force to protect the Chinese nationals, almost all of them unarmed civilians.

"Many of them are working in inaccessible tribal areas with militant sanctuaries. In urban and semi-urban centres, they face the music at the hands of Islamist vigilantes. And from insurgents in Baluchistan, who are unhappy with Islamabad and Beijing alike."

It is easy to say that the Chinese are courting trouble through their swagger and their attitude, which is aggressive and domineering.

They are the 21st-century indentured labourers furthering "China's ambitious bid to be the hegemon and Hercules of the universe". They are only basking in the reflex glory of their Yuans, which have made the Pakistani rupees its supplicant, reported POREG.

The attacks may indicate a concern amongst the locals that the new East India Company is exploiting their resources, and is creating unemployment.

It may be true but this argument does not hide Pakistan's failure in its sovereign duty of protecting unarmed foreigners, who have crossed the strategic Khunjerab Pass on the southwest border of China to create a better tomorrow for the world's second-largest Muslim country even as China's Africa story finds an echo, Popescu said.