It may be recalled that in June 2018 the FATF had found serious deficiencies in Pakistan’s anti-money laundering measures and plans to combat financing of terrorism, and gave Pakistan a 27-point action plan to work on if it wanted to be removed from the grey list.

In its last plenary meeting in October 2019, the FATF had expressed satisfaction over just 5 points of the 27-point action plan, and kept Pakistan on the grey list till February 2020.

To avoid the blacklist, Pakistan needs the support of 3 countries which it has always had, but to come out of the grey list it needs 12 more votes out of a total of 39 in the plenary meeting.

Speaking on Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that “Pakistan has made great efforts to strengthen its domestic counter-terrorism financing system with visible progress.” But the country that really matters here is the US.