South Shaheen
China is enabling parts of the Global South, particularly several Muslim-majority states, to diversify away from NATO-linked arms by offering cheaper platforms, looser export conditions, technology transfer, local assembly, and financing, all bundled with wider economic ties, including the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), energy, and satellite projects. Recently, Pakistan has been a notable example of this pivot.
The Chinese model of defense transfers links military sales to broader industrial and technological projects, including ports, logistics hubs, satellite networks, training academies, and dual-use civilian infrastructure such as shipyards and aviation facilities. This approach complements the unique roles of China’s allies, notably Russia, which has long served as both a major supplier of advanced weapons systems and a trusted defense partner for many countries in the Global South.
Defense Sovereignty Over Manufactured Wedges
Western strategists, realizing they can’t compete with China on cost, speed, or openness to sharing technology, have resorted to political pressure, trying to use religion as a wedge to weaken China’s partnerships in Muslim-majority countries. What’s striking, and often overlooked in Western narratives, is just how widely China’s approach has been accepted and supported.
Despite repeated attempts to make Xinjiang the defining issue, most Muslim governments have refused to take the bait. Many have gone further, fiercely and openly backing Beijing. Faced with a choice between symbolic outrage and concrete national security, they chose the latter. Rather than interpreting Xinjiang as proof of Chinese aggression, they understand it as a Western effort to sabotage the very partnerships now taking root.
China’s Defense Edge: Building Interconnected Ecosystems, Not Just Selling Arms
In modern war, strength lies in connection: radars must “talk” to missiles, aircraft must share targeting data with ships, and command centers must coordinate seamlessly. NATO has spent decades perfecting this web. China, meanwhile, is building its own version, one explicitly designed for its partners in the Global South.
China is not just selling weapons, but entire systems, including platforms, software, and support networks tailored to local needs. The challenge arises when these fully integrated Chinese systems have to coexist with NATO equipment. Many Global South militaries still rely on mixed arsenals. Pakistan, for example, still flies U.S.-made F-16s alongside Chinese JF-17s. But these jets belong to separate universes. F-16s are tied to American supply chains, while JF-17s run through Chinese ones. Keeping both systems alive significantly drives up costs and complicates logistics, making it a compromise that only works as a transitional strategy. Inevitably, states become increasingly entangled in one ecosystem. Pakistan’s growing joint-production deals with China show exactly where that pull leads.
China’s model is best described as “ecosystem building.” Unlike Western suppliers, who often restrict technology transfer or weaponize supply chains, China offers a more comprehensive approach: not just weapons, but packages that include training, joint ventures, concessional financing, and, most importantly, systems engineered to function as a single network. The decisive variable here is “intraoperability”– the capacity of a country’s armed services to fight as one. A military may acquire cutting-edge aircraft or missile systems, but if its Army, Navy, and Air Force cannot share data or coordinate operations, then those assets remain fragmented.
During its 4-day war with India in May 2025, Pakistan’s advantage, for instance, did not come down solely to a simple one-to-one comparison between the quality of the JF-17 and the Rafale. The key factor was how well the entire system functioned as a cohesive unit. With Chinese radars, airborne early-warning planes, and integrated missile batteries all operating together, Pakistan could see the battlefield clearly and make decisions much faster. India’s Rafales and other advanced jets are impressive on their own. Still, they struggle to reach their full potential because they aren’t fully integrated with the rest of the military’s systems. With multiple fighter types from many different countries, each with its own radars, weapons, and communication protocols linking them to air defenses and missile batteries, it presents a constant challenge. Old communication networks, reliance on Western supply chains, and fragmented command structures often leave these aircraft operating in isolation.
The lesson was simple: a military can buy the most advanced equipment in the world, but if each branch is operating on its own, it’s essentially fighting three separate wars.
The Ripple Effect: How Tech Transfers Reshape Global Defense Networks
There is a deeper historical pattern in how great powers spread military capacity: they transfer missile and aircraft technology to allies, who then indigenize and eventually become regional suppliers themselves. The Soviet Union pioneered this during the Cold War by exporting Scud missiles to Egypt, Iraq, and North Korea.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) reverse-engineered the design into its Nodong missile, which was later exported to Pakistan and Iran in the 1990s. Pakistan then developed the Ghauri missile through the same technology and lineage. At the same time, Iran created the Shahab series, and Iran eventually became a supplier in its own right, passing on the same missile technology to Hezbollah, Ansarullah, and the PMF in Iraq. In military and strategic studies, the concept of proliferation is well understood, not just as a matter of one adversary acquiring a weapon, but as a chain reaction where technology spreads from one state to others.
During the Mao era, China actively backed the Palestinian resistance, supplying weapons and training as part of its broader anti-imperialist solidarity. For China, the fight for Palestine was never just a local struggle; it was part of a wider battle against imperialist influence.
Today, the same logic continues in more structured forms. In Sudan, for example, Pakistan has begun selling indigenous but Chinese-integrated systems to the Sudanese Armed Forces. At first glance, this appears to be an ordinary arms trade, but in reality, it is a complex triangular supply chain. Chinese designs, Pakistani production, and demand from the Global South. This model expands resilience outside NATO’s orbit and builds a parallel defense ecosystem, one that strengthens states resisting imperialist fragmentation and foreign interference.
This chain shows a crucial lesson: once advanced technology is acquired, it rarely stays contained. It ripples outward, building new networks of power and loosening the West’s monopoly over high-end systems.
How Restricted Access Spurs Capability in the Global South
When China’s J-10 fighter jet is famously described as “more useful than the atom bomb,” that captures a central truth about modern warfare. Nuclear weapons can deter conflict, but they don’t actively defend airspace or determine the outcome of a limited war. Pakistan showed this clearly during its four-day clash with India in May 2025. Its J-10s took the frontline, facing off against India’s Rafales in air-to-air dogfights.
The implications were significant. First, it proved that advanced Chinese jets could match top Western aircraft in real combat, not just in exercises. Second, it showed why planes like the J-10, built on homegrown Chinese technology and so far exported only to Pakistan, are true game-changers for militaries across the Global South. They offer real-time offensive and defensive capability on a scale that states relying on downgraded or overpriced Western equipment could only dream of.
This shift cannot be understood without recalling the architecture of military tech denial that has shaped arms markets for decades: Western export-control regimes, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), were designed to stop Global South nations from gaining access to long-range missiles and drones. The MTCR is essentially a loose, voluntary club of nations aimed at preventing the spread of systems capable of carrying nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Since its founding in 1987, it has established guidelines for exporting missile technology, materials, and expertise, particularly for systems with ranges exceeding 300 km or payloads exceeding 500 kg. Members agree not to sell this kind of technology to countries that might use it to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Since the MTCR was established in 1987, China and Pakistan have been excluded due to political and strategic reasons. Dominated by Western-aligned countries, the regime was designed to control access to advanced missile technology and limit challenges to Western influence. Outside this framework, China and Pakistan have the freedom to assist other countries in the Global South, sharing technology, training, and expertise to help them develop indigenous missile capabilities. India, by contrast, joined in 2016 after demonstrating alignment with Western norms and restraint in exports.
The Power of a Slow-Build Strategy
Iran shows how bypassing this system works in practice. Instead of delivering complete weapons systems initially, which would trigger sanctions under regimes like the MTCR, China begins by providing materials, designs, and technical know-how, allowing local production to take root. Reports of Iranian orders for Chinese missile components, sufficient to build hundreds of units, illustrate this approach. It’s slower, less visible, and avoids sanctions, but it creates a far more durable strategic capability. The direction is clear, and the precedent has already been set.
For decades, the architecture of Western export controls and NATO-linked supply chains ensured that the militaries of the Global South remained dependent, fragmented, and technologically limited. Chinese co-production, financing, and willingness to transfer advanced systems from fighter jets to submarines to satellites are steadily dismantling that hierarchy. This is not just about acquiring hardware; it is about building sovereign capacity, ensuring system compatibility with non-Western standards, and the ability to fight modern wars without external permission slips. For states long trapped in asymmetric dependencies, that shift is nothing less than strategic emancipation. Pakistan is the clearest example today, but it will not be the last.
South Shaheen is a blog exploring the intersection of infrastructure and geopolitics, with a focus on the Belt and Road Initiative and regional trade corridors, viewing them as both geopolitical strategies and physical infrastructures transforming communities.
