China’s big Pak terror test comes up soon after it becomes FATF president

Chinese banker and current vice president Xiangmin Liu is expected to take over from Marshal Billingslea of the US as the president of the multilateral financial watchdog for a year.

Updated on: Jun 11, 2019, 09:48:02 IST

New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The real test on China’s commitment to tackling terrorism will come when it takes over the presidency of the 38-member Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on July 1.

Chinese banker and current vice president Xiangmin Liu is expected to take over from Marshal Billingslea of the US as the president of the multilateral financial watchdog for a year.

The appointment is significant as FATF will decide at its plenary meeting in October whether Pakistan will continue to remain in the “grey list” or be downgraded to the “black list”, which entails harsher financial sanctions.

This decision will be taken under Chinese watch after the FATF assesses whether Pakistan has delivered on a 27-point action plan against terror financing and money laundering by September.

Pakistan was placed in the grey list in June last year on the basis on consensus among FATF’s members for failing to do enough to counter terror financing and money laundering. Initially, when Pakistan was to be placed in the grey list, the consensus was broken by China, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Under FATF’s rules, three members is the minimum requirement for breaking the consensus. Subsequently, Pakistan was placed in the grey list after China and GCC withdrew their objections.

While action taken by Pakistan against terror financing and UN-sanctioned groups and individuals will be discussed at the FATF’s plenary meeting in Orlando during June 20-21 under the US presidency, the critical call will be taken in October when Pakistan’s “all-weather ally” will be heading the powerful watchdog. “If Pakistan doesn’t improve its position, then its move to seek a multi-billion dollar bailout from the IMF will be in jeopardy,” a senior official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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