China is preparing to launch the first of four warships it is building for longtime ally Pakistan, a military spokesman said yesterday.
The F-22 frigate will be launched today at a ceremony in Shanghai to undergo a series of trials before being commissioned into the Pakistani navy next year, navy spokesman Captain Akbar Naqi said.
Under a deal the two countries signed last year, China will provide four frigates to Pakistan.
“The launching of the first F-22 frigate is testimony of the eternal Pakistan-China friendship and time-tested defense relations between the two countries,” Naqi said.
China is one of the main suppliers of defense equipment to the Muslim nation.
Naqi said the ships will cost a total of about US$1 billion and will carry surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, helicopters, equipment to detect nuclear and conventional submarines, and anti-air guns capable of engaging incoming missiles.
Three of the ships will be built in China while the fourth will be constructed in a shipyard in the Pakistani port of Karachi under a “transfer of technology” deal between the two countries, he said.
Longtime cooperation between the two countries includes Chinese assistance in building tanks for Pakistan’s army as well as a nuclear power plant. They also have started joint production of JF-17 Thunder fighter jets for the Pakistani air force.
The launch comes three days before Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is scheduled to leave for a six-day visit to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and other officials.
The visit by Musharraf, a US ally in the war against terrorism, “is part of regular high-level interaction between the two countries and reflective of close bilateral ties,” the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS