On the first leg of his four-day China visit, Pakistan’s prime minister – famed for “Sharif speed”, a term describing his swift execution of development projects – met his match in a leading AI tool.

Shehbaz Sharif, keen on accelerating his nation’s digital economy with the help of Chinese firms, issued a surprise request during his visit to Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou on Sunday afternoon.

“I want a comprehensive strategic agreement,” Sharif challenged Joe Tsai, Alibaba Group chairman, while repeating “now” and “right now” to show his sincerity, impressed by Alibaba’s AI and cloud technology, according to people who attended the signing ceremony.

Such requests raise immediate logistical hurdles, and comprehensive frameworks typically require weeks of legal drafting and administrative review. Tsai, who was trained at Yale Law School and qualified to practise law in the United States, decided to draft by himself, with the help of Qwen, the firm’s AI app powered by Alibaba’s in-house foundation models.

Using his smartphone, Tsai input a few keywords, prompting Qwen to draft the backbone of an agreement for bilateral discussions, and then walked Sharif through the draft, one of the sources said.

The Qwen-generated preamble reflected the tool’s ability to navigate diplomatic ties, opening the agreement with a formal recognition of the “long-standing strategic partnership between China and Pakistan under the framework of the ‘iron brother’ alliance and the Belt and Road Initiative”.