Bangladesh
Bangladesh-China Bangladesh suffers due to defective military supplies from China
Dhaka, Feb 16: The lower or affordable pricing coupled with debt financing led Bangladesh to make heavy procurement of defence material from China in the recent past.
However, the defective and substandard Chinese equipment, types of machinery and military vehicles have become a major cause of concern for Dhaka now. Even day-to-day operations are affected due to the supply of poor-quality spare parts and maintenance services from Chinese vendors.
This has caused distress to Bangladesh's defence forces as cases of faulty Chinese arms and weapons are being reported frequently.
As China accounts for three-fourths of the South Asian country’s military procurements, the quality and longevity of the Chinese military products can be harmful to Bangladesh’s security.
Moreover, Bangladesh’s National Data Centre faced storage problems as the Chinese company ZTE supplied it with unlicensed or pirated software copies, which led to the exposure of private and sensitive information.
Bangladesh is among the developing countries that have become subjected to malfunctioning and defective military equipment from China, said Cindy Zheng, a researcher at California-based think tank RAND Corporation.
“Bangladesh reported problems with firing the ammunition loaded into its Chinese-built K-8W aircraft just shortly after their delivery,” she said.
Bangladesh lost its two pilots when the Chinese-manufactured K-8W aircraft they were flying crashed. These aircraft also encountered problems in the firing of the loaded ammunition.
All this has made Dhaka worried over the quality and capabilities of the Chinese planes.
China even did not respond to the queries and complaints lodged by Bangladesh.
Two Sudanese pilots also were killed when a Chinese K-8W crashed due to technical failure.
Bangladesh is struggling to get spare parts for the repair and maintenance of over 40 Main Battle Tanks (MBT2000) it procured from Chinese company Norinco.
Offering a great discount, China sold two used Type-035G Ming-class submarines to Bangladesh for just over USD100 million each.
However, these submarines were found to have outlived their utility.
The two frigates China sold to Bangladesh experienced multiple defects while being transported to Bangladesh. To add insult to injury, China demanded additional payment to fix the snags.
Local media in Bangladesh wrote about corruption in the purchase of submarines and warships from China.
It was revealed that the air defence system brought from China ad a non-functioning navigation radar and gun system, which not only failed to perform but caused the deaths of the users. Even there have been issues with training.
Bangladeshi airforce officers were given bad treatment by Chinese officers at the Aviation University of Changchun.
The frigates provided by Beijing-based Poly Technologies to the Bangladesh Navy developed defects in the fire control system and in the helicopter fuelling and defuelling systems.
Even the basic trainer aircraft Diamond DA-40 procured from China did not come in good condition. There were snags with the operation of various control systems.
Experts blamed China for the use of reverse engineering to produce cheaper military hardware, which can be seen as pirated copies of Western technology.
Carlos Sanchez Berzain, director of the Miami-based Inter-American Institute for Democracy, said everything China sells was backward technology that it copied from the West.
“We are not going to see that there is a Chinese initiative in technological development. Beijing does not have its own technological development, because that costs a lot of money,” he said.
Dhaka-based news editor and author Farazi Azmal Hossain said the objections over China flouting international standards, which caused poor material and workmanship, cannot be ruled out.
He said buyer countries have realized that Chinese products are short-lived or fragile.
“The problem is it’s quality or standards. At the same time, China is selling some widely used military equipment to Bangladesh. It is said These weapons are deteriorating even before they are launched,” he added.
Bangladesh had once withheld the payment as the Chinese FM-90 Surface to Air Missiles systems had developed multiple snags.
RAND Corporation’s Zheng said the difficulties in acquiring replacement parts and lack of technological compatibility with the Chinese military equipment have been turning expensive propositions for Bangladesh and others.
"If recipient countries continue to view Chinese military equipment as unreliable long term, or find training and maintenance contracts lacking, they may not want to become completely dependent on Chinese suppliers,” she said.
