How Can Pakistan Leverage Its Geography to Become a Key Energy Transit State Between the Persian Gulf and China? | RISE Research

This paper argues that Pakistan's geographic position, long described as 'strategic' but rarely analysed in concrete terms, can be converted into genuine economic and strategic leverage through a role as an energy transit state between the Persian Gulf and Western China. Situated at the crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and China, Pakistan lies between major energy producers and one of the world's largest energy consumers, creating the potential to act as a land-based bridge between energy surplus and energy demand. Using qualitative analysis of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Gwadar Port, the study examines Pakistan's capacity to facilitate overland energy flows that would reduce China's dependence on vulnerable maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. Drawing on small-state strategy and energy geopolitics, it contends that effective institutionalisation of transit infrastructure could strengthen Pakistan's relevance within regional supply chains while enabling it to pursue strategic hedging, balancing external dependence against greater autonomy. A central move in the paper is its critique of existing scholarship, which acknowledges Pakistan's strategic location but leaves geography abstract, treating it as a backdrop to diplomacy rather than a variable that can be actively operationalised through infrastructure and institutions. The paper's focus is therefore to reframe geography 'not as destiny but as a resource', asking precisely how and under what conditions Pakistan can turn location into power. Spanning international relations, geoeconomics and energy security, it links connectivity to leverage and positions energy transit as a route to strategic agency for a small state in an increasingly competitive multipolar system.