Published: 06:40 PM, 22 July 2025
China’s military export model faces major setback
China's ambitions to become a global power face a crisis. The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict revealed that Chinese military hardware consistently fails in combat conditions, with Pakistan, Beijing's largest defence importer, suffering operational disasters across air, land, and naval domains.
These failures expose fundamental weaknesses in China's military-industrial complex that threaten its strategic goal of displacing Western arms suppliers in global markets. China has positioned itself as the affordable alternative to Western defence suppliers, capturing 63% of its total arms exports through sales to Pakistan alone between 2020-2024. This concentrated dependency on a buyer shows China's failure to build a diversified customer base despite aggressive marketing. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports a 23% decline in Chinese arms exports between 2018-2022, indicating that Beijing's reputation problems extend well beyond Pakistan.
China's export model prioritizes volume over quality, offering weapons at cheaper below Western prices while providing favorable financing terms. However, this strategy has backfired spectacularly. The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) saw its market capitalization surge by 55 billion yuan after Pakistan claimed its J-10C fighters shot down Indian aircraft, yet satellite imagery confirmed that Chinese-supplied air defence systems failed to prevent Indian strikes on Pakistani military installations. This disconnect between market hype and battlefield reality exemplifies China's broader credibility problem. The root causes of Chinese weapons is systemic corruption within the People's Liberation Army and defence manufacturing sector. The Communist Party's expulsion of defence ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, along with investigations into AVIC chairman Tan Ruisong, reveals how graft permeates China's military-industrial establishment. This corruption directly translates into defective products that fail when tested in combat.
Chinese companies like China Shipbuilding Trading Company delivered F-22P frigates to Pakistan with non-functional missile systems, defective radars, and engines that could not maintain operational speeds. The FM-90 surface-to-air missile systems' infrared sensors proved so unreliable that Pakistan discarded them entirely. This is repeated across Chinese defence exports to multiple countries, including Myanmar's grounded JF-17 fleet and Bangladesh's malfunctioning military equipment.
The May 2025 conflict provided the first major combat test of modern Chinese weapons against Western systems, and the results proved catastrophic for Beijing's reputation. Chinese HQ-9 air defence systems, marketed as equivalent to the American Patriot or Russian S-400, failed to intercept Indian missiles targeting nine separate locations in Pakistan. The failure was particularly embarrassing given that India successfully struck targets near Islamabad, including the strategically vital Nur Khan air base.
Chinese offensive systems performed equally poorly. The CM-401 hypersonic missile produced no verified impacts when Pakistan deployed it against Indian targets. The PL-15 air-to-air missile, despite being marketed as superior to the American AIM-120 AMRAAM, failed to deliver the promised beyond-visual-range superiority. While China celebrated unconfirmed claims of downing Indian Rafales, the operational reality showed Cthat hinese weapons could not prevent India from achieving its military objectives. Pakistan's experience reflects a global pattern of Chinese defence export failures. Myanmar grounded its entire fleet of Chinese JF-17 fighters in 2022 due to structural cracks and radar malfunctions. Bangladesh formally complained to Beijing about defective spare parts across all three military services, specifically citing problems with K-8 trainers, F-7 fighters, and MBT-2000 tanks. Nigeria had to return seven of nine F-7 aircraft to China for repairs it couldn't obtain locally. Jordan's decision to sell its Chinese CH-4B drones just one year after acquisition is an example of Chinese equipment quality. Algeria experienced repeated crashes of Chinese drones during trials. These failures across multiple countries and weapons systems demonstrate that China's quality control problems are systemic rather than isolated to specific products or customers.
China's poor documentation practices compound these problems. Technical manuals arrive in Chinese or with translation errors that render them useless. Design changes occur without notification, making spare parts incompatible. Training programs, when provided, focus on basic operation rather than maintenance or troubleshooting. This systematic neglect of customer support reveals China's defence industry's focus on initial sales rather than long-term partnerships. The reputational damage extends to China's domestic military capabilities. If export versions of Chinese weapons fail so consistently, questions arise about the People's Liberation Army's own equipment.
The corruption scandals engulfing China's Rocket Force, responsible for the country's nuclear deterrent, suggest these quality problems affect China's most critical military systems. Taiwan and other potential adversaries closely analyze these failures when assessing China's actual versus claimed military capabilities.
Addressing these systemic failures would require fundamental reforms that China appears unwilling to undertake. Eliminating corruption from the defence sector would threaten entrenched interests within the Communist Party and PLA. Improving quality control would increase costs, eliminating the price advantage that attracts budget-conscious customers. Providing comprehensive customer support would require Chinese companies to maintain global service networks that they currently lack. The May 2025 combat failures in Pakistan will deter potential buyers who might have considered Chinese alternatives to Western systems.
China's defence export failures create opportunities for other suppliers. Russia, despite its own challenges, maintains better quality control and combat-proven systems. Smaller exporters like Turkey and South Korea offer reliable alternatives at competitive prices. Western suppliers can point to Pakistan's experience when arguing that quality justifies higher costs. The global defence market may bifurcate between countries that can afford reliable weapons and those forced to accept Chinese equipment despite its limitations. For countries currently using or considering Chinese military equipment, Pakistan's experience provides crucial lessons. Hidden costs in maintenance, training, and operational limitations far exceed any initial savings. Most critically, Chinese weapons fail when needed most.
Beijing's aspirations to challenge Western dominance in arms markets face a credibility crisis that deepens with each combat failure. The concentration of exports to problematic clients like Pakistan, combined with widespread quality issues across multiple countries and systems, suggests China's defence industry cannot deliver on its promises. Until China addresses the systemic corruption and quality control failures within its military-industrial complex, its weapons will continue to fail those who depend on them, undermining both customer security and China's strategic ambitions.
>> Source: Daily Mirror
