Pakistan’s navy chief told Chinese state media that the country’s first Chinese-built submarine is expected to enter service next year.
A deal under which Islamabad will take delivery of eight Hangor-class submarines by 2028 is “progressing smoothly,” Admiral Naveed Ashraf told the Global Times in an interview published on Sunday, adding the submarines would boost Pakistan’s ability to patrol the North Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.
Five Billion Dollar Deal
Under the $5 billion deal of eight submarines, the first four submarines will be built in China and the rest will be assembled in Pakistan to boost its technical capacity.
Pakistan has already launched three of the submarines into China’s Yangtze River from a shipyard in the central province of Hubei.
“Chinese-origin platforms and equipment have been reliable, technologically advanced and well-suited to Pakistan Navy’s operational requirements,” Ashraf told the tabloid, which is published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.
Islamabad has long been Beijing’s top arms customer, and over the 2020-2024 period bought over 60% of China’s weapons exports, data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows.
Billion-Dollar Build Up
Along with billions in arms sales, Beijing has heavily invested in building out its connections to the Arabian Sea through a 3,000 km (1864.11 miles) economic corridor stretching from China’s Xinjiang to Pakistan’s deep-water port of Gwadar.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative, seeks to give China a direct route for Middle Eastern energy imports, bypassing the vulnerable Strait of Malacca.
The initiative also extends China’s sphere of influence toward Afghanistan and Iran and onto Central Asia, and effectively encircles India, given Beijing’s ties to the junta in Myanmar and good relations with Bangladesh.
India currently operates three indigenously developed nuclear-powered submarines, along with three classes of diesel-electric attack submarines acquired or developed over decades with France, Germany, and Russia.
(With inputs from Reuters)
