China has stood by its strategic relationship with Pakistan, reiterating its strong ties with the South Asian nation after armed militants stormed the Chinese consulate in Karachi on Friday.

The bilateral alliance is "higher than (the) mountains and deeper than (the) sea," Lijian Zhao, deputy chief of mission at the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad, said on Twitter days after the terror attack. "The friendship has never been empty talks, but deeply imprinted in hearts of Chinese and Pakistani people," Zhao said, noting how Chinese civilians made donations to the families of Pakistani security officers who died on Friday.

Lijian Zhao tweet

Meanwhile, social media users in China expressed their respect and admiration for a female Pakistani police officer, Suhai Aziz Talpur, who was part of a team that killed Friday's assailants.

The incident claimed the lives of four Pakistanis. A statement from the Chinese embassy in Islamabad confirmed on Friday that no Chinese citizens were killed or injured. The Balochistan Liberation Army, one of many Pakistani voices critical of Chinese projects in the country, claimed to be behind the violence.

"China is exploiting our resources," a spokesman for the BLA, considered a terrorist organization by Islamabad and Washington, told Reuters.

The $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — a network of transport, energy, industrial and agricultural projects that runs from the Pakistani city of Gwadar to the Chinese region of Xinjiang — is a sensitive issue in the Islamic republic. The CPEC is a crucial element of Chinese President Xi Jinping's broader Belt and Road Initiative, a continent-spanning system of trade and infrastructure links.