ALWAYS FORCE THE CONTRADICTIONS:

Central to these worries are the stepped-up attacks against Chinese in Pakistan recently.

A bus carrying Chinese workers in northern Pakistan was bombed on July 14, killing 13 people, nine of whom were Chinese, and has since been attributed to Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) by Pakistani authorities. They said the attack was planned inside Afghanistan.

This was followed by another attack on Chinese workers in Karachi on July 28 and, in April, China's ambassador to Pakistan narrowly avoided a terrorist attack at a hotel in Quetta where his delegation was staying.

China has been targeted by Pakistani militants before, with the BLA launching a high-profile attack against the Chinese Consulate in Karachi in 2018. But the recent spate of incidents marks a new trend, says Abdul Basit, an expert on South Asian insurgent groups at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

"China's future is in South Asia, but there is tons of volatility at the moment," Basit told RFE/RL. "The main motivation in going after Chinese targets is that it is an effective way to cause problems for Pakistan, but the increased attacks point to a more permissive environment for groups to operate in."

While Beijing remains fixated on the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) -- a Uyghur group that Beijing blames for unrest in its western Xinjiang Province and refers to it by its predecessor's name, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) -- groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) could also pose threats to China in the future.

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