Defence ties between Pakistan and China got bolstered over the years as the two allies multiplied cooperation in other sectors too. Over the weekend, the Keel Laying Ceremony of first HANGOR Class Submarine and Steel Cutting of second Submarine was held in Karachi Shipyard & Engineering Works – an evidence of the Pakistan-China friendship.
The defence agreement between Pakistan and China included development of 08 HANGOR Class Submarines including 04 under constructions at Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group in China and remaining 04 are being built at KS&EW under Transfer of Technology agreement.
Recently, China described the Chinese military’s relationship with Pakistan’s armed forces as “serving as the mainstay of China-Pakistan friendship.” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said “China is an all-weather strategic cooperative partner and friendly neighbour of Pakistan.” China’s military has also recently hailed the importance of military-to-military relations between the two countries.
People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel Wu Qian, spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence, said that “military-to-military relations, serving as the mainstay of the China-Pakistan friendship, have played an important role in the development of bilater al relations for a long time”. About Pakistan receiving China’s J-10CE fighter jets, he said “China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners, true friends and iron brothers that share weal and woe.”
“China is willing to work with Pakistan to accelerate the construction of a closer China-Pakistan community of shared destiny in the new era,” he said, adding that “the Chinese and Pakistani militaries stand ready to expand practical cooperation in various fields to a new level and inject a new impetus into the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries”.
China has over the years maintained close relations with both military and civilian leaderships in Pakistan. For decades, the leaders of China and Pakistan have eulogized the relationship between the two countries as “higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, sweeter than honey.”
Former President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promoted the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – an infrastructure investment megaproject in Pakistan financed by China since 2015 – as a “game changer.” Sort from governments, there is firm evidence in the form of survey data that Pakistanis love China. As part of the Sinophone Borderlands public opinion survey in Pakistan in June 2022, over 1,200 Pakistani respondents were asked two open-ended questions about their perception of China.
Respondents were drawn from all regions of Pakistan and included a representative sample of age groups and genders. The same questions have also been asked in many other countries and very rarely have the answers been as significantly positive as in Pakistan. The first survey question asked what first came to people’s minds when thinking of China. The most common answers, as the word cloud reveals, were “friend,” “best friend,” “good friend,” and even “trusted friend.”
