Is China the US's Answer to Both Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Patrick Doherty has an excellent piece in Foreign Policy.com today about the need for the US to engage China to engage Pakistan(Can Fixing Afghanistan Come Via China Fixing Pakistan?). Doherty makes a number of important points that can lead to a path toward reconstructing the US's policy toward Pakistan.  

"...there are two important points of convergence between Beijing's long-term interests and Washington's. First, China is concerned with preventing Islamist terrorism from disrupting its Central Asian energy routes and its restive western region, Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan. China is actively securing natural gas and oil reserves as far as Turkmenistan on the Caspian, rebuilding the old Soviet-era pipelines to feed its western frontier and crossing territory that hosts a majority Muslim population.

Secondly, China has a stake in promoting sustainable, pan-Asian prosperity in the medium-to-long term to fuel its torrid economic growth. China -- and neighboring India -- are undertaking a monumental frenzy of urbanization. A study prepared by McKinsey estimates that approximately 375 million Chinese and 250 million Indians will move from villages to cities over the next 20 years. This growth will require a substantial productivity increase across all economic sectors -- but along the China-India periphery, the question of whether this massive urbanization will be sustainable hinges on higher levels of food production."

I have read the McKinsey Study Doherty quotes and it is absolutley fascinating.  Leadership in Beijing painfully understands the point Dorhety and McKinsey make and are worried about it.  Hopefully, the US State Department and even US Treasury in theUS-China Economic Dialogue meetings this week have raised the point, too.
But it seems to me that if we can engage China to engage Pakistan, it may be a critical move to help the US in Afghanistan.  Moving quickly after the death of Osama Bin Laden and the positive impact it may have on the region and the war, the US should pursue this option vigorously.