BEIJING – The Chinese foreign ministry Friday rejected a media report thatit was planning to build military equipment including fighter jets underChina-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) framework.
“According to our information, the relevant report is not true,” Chineseforeign ministry’s spokesperson Hua Chunying said during her regularbriefing held here.
She remarked that the CPEC was an important framework for cooperationbearing long-term interests for both sides.
The New York Times reported Thursday in a long dispatch claiming thatBeijing’s “Belt and Road” plan was taking a “military turn” as PakistaniAir Force and Chinese officials are putting the final touches on a plan toexpand Pakistan’s building of Chinese fighter jets, weaponry and otherhardware.
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The dispatch said that the newspaper had “reviewed” the confidential planwhich it says also envisages the cooperation between China and Pakistan inspace.
“All those military projects were designated as part of China’s Belt andRoad Initiative, a $1 trillion chain of infrastructure developmentprogrammes stretching across some 70 countries, built and financed byBeijing,” NYT’s correspondent Maria Abi-Habib wrote from Islamabad.
