Factors affecting strategic relations: a study of China’s internationalization policy with a view to relationships with Pakistan

Abstract

China’s President Xi Jinping's formal visit to Pakistan on 20-21April 2015 marks as a milestone in the
development of China-Pakistan relations. Keeping in view the president’s Xi’s visit in 2015, the first part of the
study assesses the significant outcomes of Xi’s visit and its implications with reflections to literature. It considers
the most essential, economic, political and social consequences for both countries’ bilateral relations. The
second part of the study focuses on measuring the most influencing factors for country relations through ranking
the most highlighted factors of two neighbouring countries during Xi’s visit in 2015. In literature, researchers try
to evaluate the visits of the country head and its impact on the countries' relations through qualitative methods.
In this unique study, the researchers have surveyed to define the levels of elements which are supposed to be
more important during Xi’s visit for both country relations in a quantitative way. Thus, this paper is potentially
original for applying a predominantly mathematical analysis for measuring country head visits and bilateral
relations of countries; which has been so far evaluated predominantly by qualitative analysis. In this current
study, the ranking and weights of the matrices show that during Xi’s visit to Pakistan in 2015, the significant
contributions towards China Pakistan relations were more economical. Therefore, this paper contributes to the
literature in the sense that it provides a mathematical equation to measure the factors contributing to bilateral
relations for any country head/delegation visit to any other country. Future studies may include some other
elements besides political, economic, and social to measure the country relations quantitatively.