Is Pak diverting bailout money to pay Chinese defence manufacturers?
Pakistan has started operating a spy ship, which was built by Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding Limited—a Chinese shipbuilding facility that was started in 1866 by the then rulers of China.
The 87-meter-long, 19-meter-broad ship carries a crew of 48 sailors and can sail at a maximum speed of 14.30 knots per hour.
As per details accessed by The Sunday Guardian, the ship has three domes that are being used to house tracking systems and radars, assembled and suggested by the Chinese technicians. The said ship, named PNS Rizwan, was handed over to the Pakistan Navy in June 2023, and arrived at Karachi naval yard, Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) base, on 26 June 2023 after travelling across Indonesian waters. Only 14 countries, including India, were in the elite list of countries operating such ships until now.
As per details shared by defence enthusiasts, the ship is presently being handled by Captain Ashfaq Ali of the Pakistan Navy.
In the last few years, Chinese spy ships, including the Yuan Wang 5 and Xiang Yang Hong 03 have been regularly berthing in countries surrounding India, which has resulted in the trial of critical projects being delayed apart from the issue of increasing security around the information network to stop these ship’s assets from gathering sensitive information.
With Pakistan now operating a ship of its own, that was being built since 2015, Indian assets on Western coasts will come under increased stress to take extra precautions.
As per the nature of details accessed by The Sunday Guardian, it can be assumed that the ship’s construction and its subsequent departure from China to Pakistan was known to the concerned government agencies in Delhi and its allies on strategic issues and they were tracking it regularly.
The details accessed by this newspaper make it clear that the ship was constantly monitored both from sky and from the ground.
These spy ships, which are designed to hear and track events happening hundreds of kilometers away, cost a fortune.
INS Dhruv, a research vessel that was inducted into the Indian Navy in 2021, took seven years to be constructed and cost more than Rs 1,500 crore or $24 billion.
Given the precarious financial condition Pakistan has been in, this development is bound to raise questions on whether the economic assistance being regularly provided by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to Islamabad were being diverted to Chinese defence manufacturing companies.