This of course is not the case (right now). But what I see is a similar to USA supremacist thinking developing in Chinese people ( not government policy as yet). This will eventually seep into their official thought process.
We need to act proactively so we don’t face 1990s kind of situation again and start reducing our dependence on China gradually.
I definitely agree on reducing dependency, but I'd disagree a bit on extrapolating from the US mentality to where China's heading.
The US works to control the world in all its aspects -- social, political, economic, etc -- and will penalize countries for straying from the key pillars. Not only that, but when the US inflicts sanctions on a country, other countries are compelled to follow those sanctions out of fear of being isolated or penalized by the US. So, if the US Pressler's you, then there's a high chance of the West following suit.
China, OTOH, views economic control, specifically supply chain and market dominance, as a tool for survival. They've historically always had the advantage in manufacturing high-quality goods at scale and low costs. Like, this goes back all the way to the 17th and 18th centuries. So, when the Europeans began trading with them, they (the Europeans) found that China was amassing a surplus while Europe was maintaining a deficit with China.
So, the Europeans went in and basically messed with Chinese society via opium, colonialist wars, and so on to basically scuttle that manufacturing edge.
Xi basically has the "FK THAT" mindset and wants to prevent or, if need be, properly deal with another imperialist situation. Lo and behold, Trump emerged as the next imperialist, carrying with him the American mentality of wanting to control everything and, in turn, denying China its right to rise.
So, for Pakistan, the issue here is that you'll never really please the US unless you take the locks off the front door. OTOH, with Beijing, there's always an opportunity to negotiate a place provided you do a damn good job negotiating and enforcing terms. However, CPEC proved that our leaders are incapable of doing so, but one can see Europe, Canada, Latin America, and even India tread this carefully and gradually get there.
Practically, the way I see it, there's nothing inherently wrong with procuring Chinese arms off-the-shelf or even licensing to produce them. However, we need to work out an arrangement with China to actually industrialize our country so that we can source more and more of the inputs that go into weapon systems, i.e., the alloys, the composites, the steel, the piping and wires, and so on.
The more of the upstream industries we build, the easier it will be for us to localize defence, even with foreign designs. For example, we could buy the next Chinese MBT design off the shelf, but with a deal to source like 70% of its value from within Pakistan via our own companies.
The CPC gradually wants to move the Chinese economy off of the low-end manufacturing work and into high-end stuff. We need to keep a close eye on those policy changes and, in turn, be sure to sync our own private-public partnerships to leverage them by emerging as new suppliers for that low-end work.
This will allow us to secure CNCs, tooling, jigs, etc, from the Chinese for that work and build our economy up. In parallel, we should invest in our own R&D to carry ourselves higher up the industrial advancement ladder, but working with the Chinese in low-level stuff gives us a strong foundation.
The problem, sadly, is that our leadership (as a whole, not pointing at anyone in particular) has its head buried in the sand, fingers up its own rear, and eyes glazed with sugar. It doesn't actually know how to govern properly, much less build strong relations.
However, with the right chops, we can productively work with the Chinese, NOT the Americans. The more competent we become, the bigger the threat we'll be to the US. Whereas with the Chinese, we need to do a better job and demonstrate that we are a real independent country, but sadly, our top leaders decide that it's a good idea to be honoured guests at the White House.
