Pak-China defence cooperation continues to deepen

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.”