ironically for all the big talk of iron brotherhood and deeper than ocean taller than mountains friendship between pakis & tiongs,
it is afghanistan under taliban and iran under revolutionary shiite regime that tiongkok might find most reliable friend, or confidante, to their immediate west. certainly both the regimes are anti yankee and one of them - taliban - fought yankee recently while the other only issued empty threats and started crying the moment yankees openly and publicly knocked out their much celebrated leader khamenei
still these are the only two that remain that tiongs can trust, to some extents, not any other