Chinas trade with india is larger than BD. It is not conceivable that china will supply BD with anything against India at a time of war and risk an economic backlash.
We must absolutely need to get out of the mindset that there is any one we can rely on but ourselves. BD will be sanctioned in any conflict, we need to develop own capacity and take descision on the basis of whatever weapons is in our inventory.
China is neither a friend nor enemy.... we are fair weather business partners to each other...nothing more. China will not intervene nor assist BD in a conflict with India just as BD will not intervene or assist China in a conflict with india.
I cannot agree with this statement at all.
During the 2001 standoff with India, China shipped in fighter aircraft among many other weapons to assist Pakistan.
Even though China-India trade was a lot lower, China did not care as it values strategic factors over mere economics.
We have to admit that BD is less important strategically to China as it does not share a border but it is nonetheless important as it is a large Muslim country with a good economy that will help keep India boxed into S Asia.
If China can use Pakistan and BD to box in India, that is one big irritant out of the way as they have USA, Japan, Korea et al to deal with in East Asia.
Let us look at the trade figures anyway. Last year China exported 74 billion US dollars to India which is less than 2% of Chinese exports.
India anyhow would just be hurting itself to boycott Chinese products as it would have to source elsewhere at much higher prices. Indian economy is weak due to multi-ethnic nature of country and Hinduvta mismanagement anyway and they can ill afford to stop importing cheap Chinese goods.
Economically India has no leverage over China.
As for developing own capacity that may be 50 years away. Even Turkey will not be ready for at least another generation as it would have great difficulty in making competitive turbofans to power it's aircraft.
BD needs to focus on Western/Chinese mix and slowly increase the content of Turkish arms into it's military, while slowly building up it's own defence industry that could take 2 or more generations to become world-class. I am hopeful on this front as BD has decent electronics tech(Walton), just created an aerospace university and currently building it's first aircraft manufacturing plant.
