Maybe sometimes its better not to say anything until the deal is done. There are host of countries, agencies, etc that would try tooth and nail to ensure JF-17s are not exported anywhere. There are host of intelligence agencies that would do the same.
There just maybe too much information being leaked. While this is a lot of fun for us here, it is detrimental to the national interest of Pakistan and China. For instance, they don't need hard facts. Just leads. So if RUMINT suggests country X is interested in plane Y, they have a lead and then can go in to investigate. Given the technologies available to the usual suspects, this second step would be easy to do.
Sometimes we imagine that certain countries are acting independently in their own self-interest. But we don't know that certain countries and groups of countries, act together because of ideological reasons. For instance, I was once talking to a disgruntled spy of a country down under, who admitted said country was spying on Saudi Arabia, sending agents there. Said country down under had no interests, no geopolitical machinations, no military in Saudi Arabia or neighboring countries, at least at that time, perhaps for all we know there may be some handfuls in Syria or Iraq now.
So why was this country acting in this way? Sadly, people who only view international politics from the perspective of individual self-interest of nations, cannot explain this and many such incidents.
Truth is that being a Muslim country is enough of a reason that they will look at ideology rather than self-interest. They will pretend very well, to talk of self-interest but reality is different. Muhammad Assad, one of the earliest Pakistani diplomats explains this in one of his books, as a collective psychological issue - when the modern West was born, its first and most immediate enemy were Turks / Moors - by that they meant not the Turkish race but Muslims. Just like a traumatic experience in childhood leaves us permanently affected, this is what happened to the West.
Suffice it to say that a dozen foreign intelligence agencies, their diplomatic might, their cooperative engagement will be aimed at ensuring weapons development, or critical industrial development is stunted in countries like Turkey and Pakistan. It will be aimed at ensuring that weapons systems like the JF-17 remain unexported. Technologies not shared.
Just as the Egyptian development of the HF-300 fighter, which would have been a Mirage substitute, was scuttled and it was ensured that no Muslim country could continue with that effort. It would have been easy for Pakistan or some other country to take a well-developed and documented project that had 6 prototypes, and build on that, despite British sanction. But this was never done...
Anyways, I'm branching off a bit. I think its very important that these political realities be kept in mind so that no untoward accident can happen that would lead to the JF-17 program being less successful than otherwise.
@messiach
