Thursday, October 17, 2002 at 09:30 JST
BEIJING — China has begun production of the FC-1 multipurpose fighter jet in preparation to sell abut 150 of the highly maneuverable, lightweight planes to Pakistan, an Asian military source said Wednesday.
The start of production of the fighter, jointly developed by China and Pakistan, on Sept 16 will strengthen ties between the countries’ defense forces while also threatening to agitate Pakistan’s neighboring fellow nuclear power India. (Kyodo News) http://japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=7&id=234732
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Could this money be better spent on something else?
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Defence is top priority for any country of this world. And this is a very viable expenditure for Pakistan, a necessary one at that. With our neighbor constantly threatening us, amassing troops, you wouldnt expect Pakistan to sit back and let them walk all over us.
By the way hope you said the same when US sold all those F-16s to Pakistan back in the 80s.
i am finding it very sad all this spending on buying weaponry and planes and bombs ....why you want to fight india because india also spends more and more and buy more weapons. because we have more money than pakistan it is easy to buy much more...see, all that happens is at the end you total up all and we both just burnt lots of dinero! china makes money by giving dummy planes and at the same time they also work with raw! how you like this?
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Could this money be better spent on something else?
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it def can be if the problems are resolved. But its in the interest of powers that be on both sides to keep the conflicts alive, to be able to stay in power and to reap benefits of that power.
We have the same issues here, W just passed a huge military spending bill, while there are def better uses for that money. sadly the circumstances push us into the direction of military spending. Its the same case there.
I suppose its in the best interest of military as well as military suppliers to have spending there. I mean why would India buy planes from Uk or Pakistan from China or lockheed getting huge grants from US DOJ.
If you people think that this money could be spent on something better, like education etc etc, you would be right. But not in our case.
It would be very difficult to channel any money towards social development when our cities are being occupied, our ports being blockaded etc. It would be great if we could spend the money on development and forget our defense, but India isn;t going to allow us such a luxury.
Where in a deadlock with India. They dont want to talk and they still want to hurl threats. Well, they can hurl as many threats as they want, but Pakistan WILL be prepared. Its easy for Indians to rant and rave over the virtues of disarming, but they dont have to worry about an enemy ten thimes their size!!!
Pakistan-China Relations