Sociologist and activist DaShanne Stokes had said, “Truth is hard, propaganda is cheap.” He should have added that propaganda has a limited life; after that the truth emerges. China is a past-master at producing cheap goods and propaganda. It has a huge department called the United Front Works Department (UFWD) that manages influence operations, co-opts quislings in other countries, and discredits democracy. Both Mao and Xi Jinping had called it the “magic weapon” of China. All countries lie in their dealings with other nations; the lies are subtle, couched in the language of diplomacy, keeping a large scope of deniability and obfuscation when the lie is caught. In the early 17th century, Sir Henry Wotton had famously said, “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” The Chinese have one advantage over others; they need not be honest as long as they lie successfully about their country. The UFWD corrupts to win influence in other countries and which honest person will use corruption as the tool of his trade?

Chinese emperors lied to their people for millennia calling their mandate to rule as “heavenly”; most of the other kings in other places too claimed their divine right to the throne. The Chinese took this lie a few notches higher by claiming their palace to be the one and only centre of civilization, surrounded by concentric circles of increasing barbarism as one moved away from the centre. Hence, going into China and going out of it was forbidden. Even the famous Chinese traveller Hsüen Tsang was denied permission to visit India for getting authentic Buddhist scriptures; he had to sneak out. In the 19th century, the West imposed its will on the last dynasty, the Qing, who themselves were not Han Chinese but were from the foreign land known as Manchuria. The will was imposed through the barrels of large artillery mounted on ships and the Chinese realised that these barbarians were powerful and could not be kept out with any Great Wall as they had sought to do with the Mongol barbarians. Ever practical, they said, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” They borrowed from the West to build railways and those bonds remain unpaid till today; they have been “borrowing” Western technology ever since without paying for the IPR.

But we digress; we are on the theme of Chinese lies and the tortoise of truth finally beating the hare of propaganda. China is a financial giant but it is wary of publishing its youth unemployment data. It hid the failure of its one-child policy and now it is hiding its true population figures, those being lower than what was officially claimed over the years. Its title of being “the factory of the world” is somewhat fraying at the edges and it has shifted to printing money, as usual, offering below-production-cost rates. India’s neighbours, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia are its currency printing clients; good luck to them till they discover that like everything else, China cooks figures here too. Let us add one more; China’s glass bridges, touted as a huge tourist attraction, are cracking and many of the provinces have closed them; Hebei province has closed all 32 of these ‘marvels’.

An unlikely incident of being ‘cooked’ alive happened recently in Bangladesh. Various news agencies carried Bangladesh’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) press release of 9th September that a tank exploded during a live fire exercise at Hathazari, Chattogram, burning to death two soldiers and injuring an officer. The disaster was caught on camera with the middle of the tank exploding violently as a shell was fired. Analysts have identified the tank as one of the Chinese origin Type 59, which China had recently upgraded.

Many questions have been raised in the past about the quality of Chinese equipment but now military equipment made in China and sold to the third world is increasingly coming into focus, starting particularly with Operation Sindoor. Pakistan had deployed Chinese HQ-9 and Hq-16 surface-to-air missiles, but these failed to stop Indian missiles and drones, resulting in damage to several Pakistani installations and airbases. Chinese PL-15 beyond-visual-range missiles fired by Pakistan at Indian targets proved to be off-mark and some unexploded parts were recovered in India. China-made radar installations at Chunian Air Base and at Lahore failed to detect incoming Indian missiles and were destroyed. Earlier, the Pakistan Navy had shown its dissatisfaction with the Chinese F-22P frigates which suffered from engine degradation and overall poor performance. The Chinese FM90(N) missile system bought by Pakistan was found to have a defective infrared sensor (IR17) system. Whether the failures were of equipment alone, or of poor training of Pakistanis or of integration of mixed-origin equipment, the result was a severe blow to China’s efforts to establish itself as a credible and cheaper alternative to Western and Russian equipment.

The disaster in Bangladesh was not a one-off exception. During the current Houthi campaign against Saudi oil pipelines and other installations, the oil kingdom tried to hit back with Chinese missiles. Videos doing the rounds on the social media show the Houthis fooling around with an unexploded Chinese missile with DF-15A markings. The solid-fuel missile malfunctioned mid-flight and crashed, without exploding, in the Raghwan district of Marib, Yemen. This was the first combat use of this type of missile by Saudi forces and it is highly unlikely that this weapon will be trusted for future use.

These two incidents come on top of many others of similar nature. In Iran, Chinese HQ-9B surface-to-air missile systems struggled to counter US-Israel electronic suppression and failed to intercept incoming weapons. In Venezuela, when US forces invaded to capture Maduro, he was smug that the Chinese JY-27A radar units would give advance warning of incoming stealth aircraft. As frequently happens with the Chinese equipment, the radar units were offline due to lack of maintenance and this sealed Maduro’s fate who is now languishing in an American prison. In Thailand, a gun-barrel failure on a Chinese VT-4 main battle tank had resulted in serious injuries to operating soldiers. Myanmar has faced continuous problems with Chinese JF-17 fighter planes, particularly with radar-integration. A large number of Chinese F-7 and F-7 derivative aircraft have remained grounded in Nigeria and Kenya due to faster wear and tear and non-availability of spares. Chinese VN-4 armoured vehicles that were sold to these countries have also shown low armour effectiveness.

In addition to poor logistics and maintenance, an important reason for these failures is the reluctance of China to sell the latest equipment which is reserved for its PLA. Since the latest of China is invariably below the cutting edge of the Western and even the Russian equipment, such older versions have problems of material failure when used with the latest ammunition as also of integration with new radars and aim-locking technologies. In June 2023, the Rand Corporation had published an article, “Countries buy defective Chinese military equipment. Why?” It said that cut-rate pricing and cheap financing attract customers but there are hidden costs of malfunction, compatibility, maintenance and accountability. Propaganda and hard-sell coupled with bribes to third world leaders also play a role in pushing sales. A 2026 report “The defective Chinese Weapons” of ‘Investigative Journalism Reportika’ says that the “Chinese exports show significantly higher rates of technical faults, operational breakdowns and sustainment challenges.”

‘Once bitten, twice shy’ buyers are skipping Chinese arms with its weapon exports declining by 5.4% between 2020 and 2024 while Russian exports grew by 64%. It appears that the world trusts even Putin more than Xi Jinping. / DAILYWORLD /

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)