By Aamer Ahmed Khan
BBC News, Islamabad

Chinese president Hu Jintao's Pakistan visit could not have come at a better time for an embattled Pakistani leadership.

President Musharraf has spent most of this year sparring with irate neighbours, adamant clerics in parliament and religious militants in the border areas who have been getting bolder by the day.

He must have been desperate for a strong friend to shake his hand without asking for politically unpalatable favours in return.

Few world leaders can claim to be stronger than President Hu Jintao.

Perhaps none who can lend the kind of unqualified support to Pakistan that President Musharraf is looking for.

'No parallel'

Little surprise then that official news agencies in China have been hinting at deals that "find no parallel in history".

For over 40 years, China and Pakistan have successfully shielded their friendship from the region's turbulent politics.

Not only that, they have worked as allies in areas ranging from international diplomacy to heavy weapons manufacture and nuclear power generation.

Only for a brief while in the late 1980s, when the militant Islamist movement spawned in Pakistan was threatening to spill over into China's Muslim majority Xinjiang province, did the two see waters turning choppy for a while.

The problem was quickly and quietly dealt with by Pakistan, for reasons not too deep to fathom.

China has disputes with India quite similar in nature to those the latter has with Pakistan.

Its claim on Arunachal Pradesh and Pakistan's quarrel with India over Kashmir have traditionally acted as a common comfort zone for the two.

'New realities'

It is this long established comfort zone that guarantees new deals in an atmosphere of happy camaraderie.

For Pakistanis, friendship with China has been an emotional affair

But sitting behind closed doors, analysts employed by the Pakistani security establishment may not be sharing the leaders' smiles.

"Given Mr Hu's historic Indian visit, we could well be looking at a new security paradigm in South Asia," says defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqua Agha.

"We could be looking at a troika with India, China and the US at each of the vertices."

Ms Agha says the emerging scenario must be giving sleepless nights to Pakistan's security establishment.

She argues that Pakistan and China have hardly ever been a part of any substantive multilateral arrangement - a possibility that has emerged strongly from Mr Jintao's India visit.

But defence analyst Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi is loathe to read too much into the budding love between India and China.

"Pakistan's relations with China have always been at a higher level than those between China and India," he says.

Ambassador of peace

Dr Rizvi argues that despite the two Asian giants' declared intentions of forging more robust ties, there are fundamental issues that plague their paths.

These include, among others, border disputes, the Tibetan problem and the impact that the mushrooming growth in China's small enterprise manufacture is having on Indian industry.

"So in the long run, Pakistan has little to be wary off. It is primarily an issue of adjusting to short term changes."

According to Dr Rizvi, China has realised that if it is to play a dominant role in the region, it must first establish its credentials as an "ambassador of peace" in the region.

This could be the toughest bit for Pakistan to swallow.

In essence, it means China may no longer be prepared to be a silent spectator to the many conflicts that Pakistan is involved in.

Nor can it be seen to be lending Pakistan any form of moral, political or material support for its policy of maintaining "low-intensity conflict" with its troubled neighbours.

China may also become more sensitive towards local insurgencies such as the one in Balochistan where it is helping Pakistan build an alternative port that is billed as the gateway to Central Asia.

This could be a reason why the much anticipated increase in civil nuclear cooperation deal has not materialised so far.

Some analysts say Pakistan's security policy needs to recognise the fact that China is no longer the friendly sleeping giant that they have known so far.

It seems to have woken up with a visibly disapproving frown for conflict in the region.

How good or bad that is for Pakistan is a question many are now puzzling over.