Editor’s note for May 3, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader:
The Chinese government has long called Pakistan its “iron brother,” and the Chinese Communist Party maintains strong and deep ties with the government in Islamabad and its security services that involve enormous investments in infrastructure, loans, and military cooperation.
But there is also a lot of popular resentment in Pakistan against China, as we have been documenting for years. Today’s top story is about another source of friction: religious differences. In this case, a Chinese national working on a hydropower project was arrested for blasphemy, a serious crime that is punishable by death in Pakistan.
The man has been released, which does not usually happen in cases where the accused is Pakistani. Meanwhile, users of social media platform Weibo have been questioning China’s relationship with Pakistan, with comments like this:
Pakistan is not a normal country. It’s not secular enough, it’s too religious, and they like internal fighting. In the past two years, the incidence of terrorism has been higher than that of Iraq. What kind of future does such a country have?
For all the details on the blasphemy case, click through to our website, or scroll down for a summary.
Our Word of the Day is: blasphemy 亵渎 xièdú
