These events have “made China – which is Pakistan’s best friend and arch-rival of the US – closer to Pakistan, and India – which is Pakistan’s arch-rival – the best friend of the United States and brought it closer to the West,” Hyder said. “The lines have been drawn.”

Pakistan fears US is targeting its China links as it seeks to settle score

Before the J-10C deal, Pakistan’s flagship air force venture with China had been for a fleet of lightweight JF-17 “Thunder” warplanes to replace the country’s ageing Chinese and French jets, Hyder said. More than 150 JF-17s – all built in Pakistan – have entered service with the country’s air force since 2008. A third updated version of the jet is being manufactured and marketed to a growing number of developing countries including Argentina and Nigeria.

Changing strategic circumstances in South Asia, however, have led to “a natural evolution of the defence partnership that we see in the recent statement of [Pakistan’s] interior minister,” Hyder said. “It is all but natural for this all-weather partnership to become stronger, based on the increasingly enhanced shared security interests of China and Pakistan.”

The two also have shared economic interests centred around the US$65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, as well as the financial assistance Beijing has repeatedly extended to Islamabad.

Warplane gains

Analysts said Pakistan is likely to tap China for more aircraft in future, to match India’s planned acquisitions of additional Western warplanes – including a proposal to acquire up to 144 advanced fighters that Delhi is considering as part of an estimated US$15 billion tender later this year.

Billed as one of the world’s biggest military procurement programmes for years, the massive tender calls for technology transfers enabling 85 per cent of the planes to be built in India. The Dassault Rafale and Sweden’s Saab JAS 39 Gripen are in the running for the contract, competing against three US warplanes: the F-15, F-18 and an advanced F-16 variant dubbed the F-21.

India has said it wants to increase its number of operational air force squadrons from about 30 at present to the 42 it considers necessary to defend itself against a simultaneous attack from both China and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, US military assistance to Pakistan has been suspended since 2018 and Islamabad can no longer rely on Washington to update its ageing fleet of F-16s – some of which date back to the 1980s and would be no match for the newer Western warplanes being offered to India.

“It’s clear that Pakistan is banking on China to help it maintain some semblance of a strategic balance in South Asia amid a rapidly growing US-India security partnership,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Washington-based Wilson Centre think tank’s Asian programme.

Pakistan’s reliance on Chinese weaponry had intensified over the past decade, he said, making Beijing Islamabad’s top source of arms supplies by a wide margin.

“It’s no coincidence that this reliance has increased amid a cooling of US-Pakistan ties – including a freeze on US security aid to Pakistan – and growing US-India ties,” Kugelman said. “Pakistan can no longer rely on new infusions of US F-16s, and that’s a major factor right there driving Islamabad’s heightened efforts to look to Beijing to strengthen its air power capacity.”

Pakistan bends again as it grants US warplanes access to its skies

The J-10C, which first entered service with the Chinese air force in 2018, is considered a capable counterpart to more modern variants of the F-16, and would empower Pakistan to challenge any attempt by India to establish air superiority using Rafales or other Western warplanes in the event of a future war.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two major wars and several localised conflicts since independence in 1947.

Two years of intense skirmishing along the disputed Kashmir border followed the attacks, ending in February last year after secretive talks between India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, and the then-chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed.

In any case, there is “not much appetite in Washington right now for exploring new and broader forms of partnership with Islamabad,” Kugelman said. “And there’s not much of a desire for looking into what circumstances might warrant an unfreezing of US security assistance to Pakistan.”

The core focus for Washington is expanding the US-India relationship and countering China, Kugelman said – priorities that leave little strategic space for deeper US-Pakistan cooperation.

Stealth prospects

As the West increasingly leaves Pakistan out in the cold, Kugelman said it was “certainly a possibility” that Islamabad would seek to acquire China’s fifth-generation J20 stealth warplane to offset future Indian defence purchases.

“We could start to see larger volumes of US military technology flowing to India,” he said, as Washington and Delhi implement the various defence agreements they have concluded in recent years. “This is something that would concern Islamabad, even if it’s not a surprising development, given the consistent growth in US-India security ties in recent years.”

Pakistan will look to keep pace, Kugelman said, with China likely figuring as a willing partner. “Beijing benefits as much as Islamabad does by enhancing Pakistan’s air power capacity, given that both view India as a strategic rival,” he said.

How India and Pakistan can achieve peace ‘by pieces’

The India-China clash in Ladakh in 2020 also gave Beijing a strong incentive to use Pakistan as a counterweight to India, Kugelman said.

“If Pakistan makes a play for the J20, this would certainly concern Washington given its intensifying rivalry with China,” he said.

“But it wouldn’t be viewed as a surprise in Washington, where there is a desire for narrowly based forms of partnership with Islamabad, but also a recognition that Pakistan is a close ally of China and that this won’t change any time soon.”