China’s military hardware under spotlight as India-Pakistan conflict intensifies: report

HONG KONG: The escalating conflict between India and Pakistan could be offering the world a first real glimpse into how advanced Chinese military technology performs against proven Western hardware -- and Chinese defence stocks are already surging, foreign outlet ‘CNN’ said in a report titled ‘China has spent billions developing military tech. Conflict between India and Pakistan could be its first major test’ published on Friday.

Shares of China’s AVIC Chengdu Aircraft rose 40 per cent this week, as Pakistan claimed it used AVIC-produced J-10C fighter jets to shoot down Indian combat aircraft -- including the advanced French-made Rafale -- during an aerial battle on Wednesday, CNN added.

India has not responded to Pakistan’s claims or acknowledged any aircraft losses. When asked about the involvement of Chinese-made jets, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday he was not familiar with the situation.

Still, as Pakistan’s primary arms supplier, China is likely watching intently to find out how its weapon systems have and potentially will perform in real combat.A rising military superpower, China hasn’t fought a major war in more than four decades. But under leader Xi Jinping, it has raced to modernise its armed forces, pouring resources into developing sophisticated weaponry and cutting-edge technologies.

It has also extended that modernisation drive to Pakistan, long hailed by Beijing as its “ironclad brother”.Over the past five years, China has supplied 81 per cent of Pakistan’s imported weapons, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Those exports include advanced fighter jets, missiles, radars and air-defence systems that experts say would play a pivotal role in any military conflict between Pakistan and India. Some Pakistan-made weapons have also been co-developed with Chinese firms or built with Chinese technology and expertise.

“This makes any engagement between India and Pakistan a de facto test environment for Chinese military exports,” said Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a think tank based in London.

Chinese and Pakistani militaries have also engaged in increasingly sophisticated joint air, sea and land exercises, including combat simulations and even crew-swapping drills.“Beijing’s long-standing support for Islamabad -- through hardware, training, and now increasingly AI-enabled targeting -- has quietly shifted the tactical balance,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the US-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

“This is not just a bilateral clash anymore; it’s a glimpse of how Chinese defence exports are reshaping regional deterrence.”That shift -- brought into sharp focus by rising tensions between India and Pakistan following an attack on tourists in held Kashmir -- underscores a broader geopolitical realignment in the region, where China has emerged as a major challenge to American influence.

India and Pakistan have gone to war over Kashmir three times since their independence from Britain in 1947. During the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union backed India, while the US and China supported Pakistan. Now, a new era of great-power rivalry looms over the long-running conflict between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours.

Despite its traditional policy of nonalignment, India has drawn ever closer to the US, as successive American administrations courted the rising South Asian giant as a strategic counterweight to China. India has ramped up arms purchases from America and its allies, including France and Israel, while steadily reducing its reliance on Russian weaponry.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has deepened ties with China, becoming its “all-weather strategic partner” and a key participant in Xi’s signature global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative. According to SIPRI’s data, the US and China each supplied about one-third of Pakistan’s imported weapons in the late 2000s. But Pakistan has stopped buying American arms in recent years and increasingly filled its arsenal with Chinese weapons.

Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher in the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, noted that while China has been an important arms supplier to Pakistan since the mid-1960s, its current dominance largely comes from stepping into a vacuum left by the US.

More than a decade ago, the US accused Pakistan of not doing enough to fight “terrorists” -- including Taliban fighters -- that it said were operating from or being supplied in Pakistan. Wezeman said that added to Washington’s existing frustrations over Islamabad’s nuclear programme and lack of democracy. “(The US) finally found India as an alternative partner in the region. As a result, (it) more or less cut Pakistan off from US arms,” he added. “China’s arms supply on the other hand significantly increased -- one can say that China used the opportunity to show itself as the only real friend and ally of Pakistan.”

China has expressed regret over India’s military strikes against Pakistan and has called for calm and restraint. Before the latest escalation, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed support for Pakistan in a phone call with his counterpart, calling China Pakistan’s “ironclad friend”.

Military showdown

With Pakistan armed largely by China and India sourcing more than half of its weapons from the US and its allies, any conflict between the two neighbours could effectively be a showdown between Chinese and Western military technologies.

After weeks of rising hostilities following the killing of 26 mostly Indian tourists at a scenic mountain spot in held Kashmir, India launched missile strikes early on Wednesday morning, targeting several sites in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir.

Many analysts believe the missiles and other munitions were fired by India’s French-made Rafale and Russian-made Su-30 fighter jets.Pakistan, meanwhile, touted a great victory by its air force, claiming that five Indian fighter jets -- three Rafales, a MiG-29 and a Su-30 fighter -- were shot down by its J-10C fighters during an hour-long battle it claimed was fought by 125 aircraft at ranges over 160 kilometres (100 miles).

“(It) is now being characterised as the most intense air-to-air combat engagement between two nuclear-armed nations,” said Salman Ali Bettani, an international relations scholar at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. “The engagement represented a milestone in the operational use of advanced Chinese-origin systems.”

India has not acknowledged any aircraft losses, and Pakistan has yet to provide evidence to support its claims. But a French Defence Ministry source said at least one of India’s newest and most-advanced warplanes -- a French-made Rafale fighter jet -- was lost in the battle. “If … confirmed, it indicates that the weapon systems at Pakistan’s disposal are, at the minimum, contemporary or current compared to what Western Europe (especially France) offers,” said Bilal Khan, founder of Toronto-based defence analysis firm Quwa Group Inc.

Despite the absence of official confirmation and hard proof, Chinese nationalists and military enthusiasts have taken to social media to celebrate what they see as a triumph for Chinese-made weapon systems.

Shares of China’s state-owned AVIC Chengdu Aircraft, the maker of Pakistan’s J-10C fighter jets, closed 17 per cent higher on the Shenzhen exchange on Wednesday, even before Pakistan’s foreign minister claimed the jets had been used to shoot down India’s planes. Shares in the company rose an additional 20 per cent on Thursday.

The J-10C is the latest version of China’s single-engine, multirole J-10 fighter, which entered service with the Chinese air force in the early 2000s. Featuring better weapon systems and avionics, the J-10C is classified as a 4.5-generation fighter -- in the same tier as the Rafale but a rung below 5th-generation stealth jets, like China’s J-20 or the US F-35.

China delivered the first batch of the J-10CE -- the export version -- to Pakistan in 2022, state broadcaster CCTV reported at the time. It’s now the most advanced fighter jet in Pakistan’s arsenal, alongside the JF-17 Block III, a 4.5-generation lightweight fighter co-developed by Pakistan and China.

The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) also operates a larger fleet of American-built F-16s, one of which was used to shoot down a Soviet-designed Indian fighter jet during a flare-up in 2019.