Boosting Military Trade with Pakistan
A report by the Griffith Asia Institute says that China’s investment in CPEC dropped 40% in 2024, after slumping 74% in 2023. “CPEC has been somewhat of a failure for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. They have projected it as a crown jewel, so they cannot back out of it. But if you see the trajectory of their investment, that is not increasing. China wants other countries to invest in Pakistan rather than China solely investing in it. They want the Gulf money to be there. They want the American money to be there too,” says Antara Ghoshal Singh, Fellow — Strategic Studies Programme at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.Despite China’s declining economic investment in Pakistan, its military trade with Islamabad has been consistently on the rise. Per a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) April report, China’s military expenditure is at $314 billion — that accounts for 12% of global military expenditure. The report also suggests that China’s military expenditure increased 7% on an annualised basis in 2024, marking the 30th consecutive year of growth.
Another SIPRI report from March says Pakistan is the biggest recipient of China’s military trade, accounting for 63% of Beijing’s military exports. This comes even as several large arms importers look away from buying from China for political reasons. Meanwhile, India witnessed a decrease in arms imports in 2024, partially due to a greater reliance on designing and producing its own arms and munitions. Interestingly, India’s arms imports from Russia, which continues to be its largest arms importer, have been declining. From 55% in 2015, it’s dropped to 36% in 2024.
Beijing’s Push for Regional Influence
A reduced dependence on Russian armaments is also the byproduct of India choosing to import from Western suppliers like France, Israel and USA. India is not alone in this shift. Taiwan is using a similar strategy, trying to reduce its heavy reliance on US-made weapons by developing domestic systems too. Interestingly, Taiwan also unveiled domestically made anti-drone and Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV) systems in mid-2024, which share strong similarities with India’s current air defence systems. Both anti-drone/UAV systems are layered, indigenous, modular and designed for both hard and soft kills.
China’s military supremacy is thus a threat to countries like Taiwan and India despite geographic differences.
Experts believe the for Beijing, the push to establish dominance in the region is decades old, and a long-term play. “China’s strategic objectives in the context of the India-Pakistan conflict are shaped by its broader national goal of achieving the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ by 2049, which includes expanding national power and revising the international order. In the current conflict, this includes containing India’s rise in South Asia, countering US influence in the region, and establishing regional dominance,” says Suyash Desai, a political scientist specialising in foreign affairs.
China’s Modernisation Drive
The recent military actions between India and Pakistan, in which India says Pakistan deployed Chinese weapons systems, have driven home the extent of China’s influence over Pakistan’s military strength. While Beijing saw its drone supplies being shot down by New Delhi, experts predict this may only result in stronger Sino-Pakistan ties on the defence front. “China has to protect its face after the humiliation of its air defences by the Indian missile strikes. Thus, its approach has started shifting from a balance to a tilt towards Pakistan,” Desai adds.
However, Beijing is not among the top 10 arms importers in the world. It has been steadily reducing its arms imports and focusing on building superior indigenous systems. This has ramped up in recent years as part of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) strategy to focus more on modernisation efforts. “PLA’s operational concepts have shifted dramatically since the late 20th century from a Maoist ‘people’s war’ framework to a technology-driven, multidomain integrated joint operations,” Desai explains.
Highlighting the shift in PLA’s mission under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Desai further says, “The current doctrine articulated in the 2019 ‘military strategic guidelines for the new era’ emphasises winning “limited local wars” through agility, speed, and long-range precision strikes across multiple domains (air, land, sea, space, and cyber). It focuses on ‘system-of-systems’ warfare that integrates big data, artificial intelligence and networked systems to enhance decision-making and battlefield coordination. In this regard, the military reforms that the PLA is undergoing since 2015 focusses on improving the armed forces’ organisation and force structures, firepower, mobility and personnel management policy.”
Deepening Diplomacy, Doubts Afloat
Much has been said about the use of Chinese drones in the India-Pakistan conflict since April 22, 2025, but the real engagement between Islamabad and Beijing began strengthening much more rapidly than in the past after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif came to power. For instance, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website, there have been 10 high-level interactions, visits and engagements between Chinese and Pakistani officials starting March 2024, when Sharif took office. This marks a significant shift in how China and Pakistan have been engaging diplomatically from when Sharif’s immediate predecessor, Imran Khan, was in power.
While interactions between Pakistani officials and their Beijing counterparts have been accelerating, the sentiment within China towards Pakistan has not been wholly simpatico. “Chinese society remains very apprehensive about developments in Pakistan. In the last two months, there have been incidents of terrorism from Pakistan targeting Chinese officials. Beijing had raised concerns over Islamabad’s inefficiency in protecting China’s personnel working in Pakistan, although they accepted Pakistan’s assertion of a third party being involved in the attack. However, terrorism from Pakistan remains a big issue within the Chinese society itself,” says Singh.
In many ways, China’s calibrated increase in military and diplomatic support to Pakistan reflects a broader strategy; one that blends economic caution with military assertiveness to preserve regional influence. While its economic enthusiasm for Pakistan may be waning, its strategic interests remain firmly intact.
For Beijing, the balancing act between protecting national interests and managing global perception is far from over.
