China’s often flawed arms still buy lasting influence

Support Asia Times Keep independent journalism alive Support us China's VT-4 tanks have reliability issues. Image: Instagram China’s weapons may face mounting questions over quality, reliability and after-sales support, but its arms trade still serves a larger strategic purpose: locking vulnerable states into long-term military, economic and political dependence. That paradox is at the center of a June 2026 report by The Takshashila Institution, which argues that China’s rise as a major global arms exporter has outpaced its ability to guarantee battlefield performance and life-cycle support.

The report says China’s state-led military-industrial complex has supplied a rising number of tanks, drones, ships, missiles and aircraft to buyers, including Pakistan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya and Myanmar. It notes repeated problems in widely exported systems, including thermal and metallurgical issues in VT-4 tanks used by Thailand and Nigeria, and crashes, offloading incidents or groundings involving CH-4B drones operated by Jordan, Iraq and Algeria. China became one of the world’s top arms exporters while reducing its own dependence on imports, with Pakistan, Serbia, Thailand and Algeria relying heavily on Chinese weapons systems by 2025.

Still, the report says operational failures, spare-parts shortages, sanctions pressure, corruption probes and renewed US and Russian competition may limit deeper defense ties beyond close partners such as Pakistan. Yet China’s offer remains attractive because its weapons are relatively affordable, come with fewer political conditions attached than Western arms and can complement wider Chinese infrastructure, finance and diplomatic relationships. For China, such sales offer more than revenue: they provide combat feedback, increase political leverage and strengthen ties with states that often have few Western alternatives.

Their deeper value lies in the ecosystem around them: frigates, jets, drones, tanks and armored vehicles require spare parts, maintenance, software updates, training and access to the supplier over years. Those dependencies give China channels of influence long after the initial sale, helping bind clients’ foreign policy, defense and economic interests more closely to its own. Pakistan shows how that dependence works.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data show China was the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter from 2021 to 2025, accounting for 5.6% of global arms exports. Pakistan was by far China’s biggest customer, taking 61% of its arms exports over that period.

Pakistan’s reliance on Chinese systems has deepened as US sanctions linked to its nuclear and missile programs have blocked access to US and Western weapons. For China, arming Pakistan also helps to keep rival India strategically stretched. A crisis involving Pakistan in Kashmir and China along the Himalayan frontier would force India to divide strategic attention, military assets and political bandwidth between two nuclear-armed adversaries.

The military relationship is reinforced by economics. Pakistan is a central node in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) linking western China to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan’s Gwadar port. That route gives China a partial hedge against the Strait of Malacca, through which an estimated 75% to 80% of China’s crude oil supply passes and could conceivably be blocked in any conflict with the United States.

For Pakistan, CPEC has been an economic lifeline, bringing as much as $25.9 billion in Chinese direct investment and generating up to 260,000 jobs. That’s given China rich leverage over Pakistan.

The deeper Pakistan’s dependence on Chinese arms, finance and infrastructure becomes, the harder it is for Pakistan to resist China’s geopolitical preferences. Any attempt to scale back CPEC projects or limit Chinese influence could expose Pakistan to financial penalties, diplomatic pressure or reduced military cooperation. Myanmar is in a similar situation.

Chinese arms sales to the coup-installed junta suggest Beijing sees the military regime, despite its brutality on the battlefield and lack of recognition in the West, as the most viable force for holding the country together and protecting Chinese interests. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) is central to those interests. Like CPEC, it offers China another hedge to its Malacca dilemma through roads, pipelines and a key port on the Indian Ocean.

Between the February 2021 coup and 2023, Myanmar reportedly received $3 billion in Chinese foreign direct investment, much of it tied to CMEC and mining. Chinese weapons have kept the junta in the fight against a panoply of rebel groups. Fighter jets, helicopters, artillery and armored vehicles supplied by China have boosted the military’s conventional advantage, even as the coup regime has lost significant ground across the country, including in western Rakhine stat