After ‘beating’ China to emerge as the world’s most populated country, New Delhi has achieved another not-so-glorious milestone—emerging as the second-biggest arms importer in the world. Meanwhile, Beijing remains out of the Top 10 list thanks to its self-reliance in defense manufacturing.
The United Nations Population Division announced in 2023 that India had overtaken China as the most populous country in the world. As of March 2023, India’s population was believed to be 1,425,775,850, surpassing China for the first time. In fact, this was the first time since the 1950s, that China slipped off from the top spot.
China’s population drop was attributed to decades of stringent legislation, including the implementation of a one-child policy in the 1980s, forced abortions, sterilization, and penalties for having more children.
While reports of India’s population taking over that of China initially caused some concern in India, the experts allayed these concerns by arguing that India’s population had not experienced an explosion and that the country’s demographic was primarily young, in contrast to China’s ageing population.
However, while India may not have to worry about overtaking China as the world’s most populous country, New Delhi has enough reasons to be concerned about China’s growing self-sufficiency in arms development and manufacturing.
China’s Falling Vs India’s Growing Imports
A recent report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Sweden-based independent international institute that monitors global arms purchases, states that China’s weapons imports have decreased by about two-thirds in the last five years as the domestic arms industry has progressively replaced foreign weapons purchases.
The March 2025 report concluded that China’s arms imports fell 64% between 2020 and 2024 compared with the previous five years.
The SIPRI March 2025 report said: “China’s arms imports fell by 64 per cent and accounted for 1.8 per cent of the global total in 2020–24, compared with 5.1 per cent in 2015–19. China was not among the world’s top 10 arms importers for the first time since 1990–94. China’s increasing ability to design and produce its own major arms means that it is far less reliant on arms imports than it was previously. Its arms imports will probably decrease further as the capacity of its domestic arms industry grows.”
This reflects a broader and consistent trend of falling arms imports in China. In 2024, for instance, SIPRI report noted that China’s arms imports in the 2019-23 period fell by 44% compared to the previous five years.
The March 2025 SIPRI report states that the falling imports could be attributed to the expansion of China’s local arms industry. This industry replaced some very advanced military equipment that was traditionally purchased from Russia with domestically manufactured systems. The report predicts that this trend will continue.
According to Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher with SIPRI’s arms transfers program, China required 30 years to develop its domestic high-tech arms industry.
“In the last five years, the biggest things that they still imported from Russia were basically two things, helicopters and engines – they are actually extremely difficult to produce if you don’t have a background in it – and that is where China has broken through,” he explained.
“China [now] makes its own engines for combat aircraft, transport aircraft and ships. The same [goes] with helicopters, where China has developed its own helicopters, completely Chinese, and is phasing out imports of those from Russia and also from European designs.”
For the first time since 1990–94, China did not feature in the list of the world’s top ten arms importers. At the same time, four states in Asia and Oceania ranked among the 10 largest arms importers globally in 2020–24: India, Pakistan, Japan and Australia.
While China is becoming self-sufficient in arms manufacturing, India continues to feature among the largest importers of arms in the world, second only to Ukraine, which has been fighting a protracted war with Russia.
“India was the world’s second largest arms importer in 2020–24 with an 8.3 per cent share of global imports. Indian arms imports decreased by 9.3 per cent between 2015–19 and 2020–24. The drop was at least partly the result of India’s increasing ability to design and produce its own weapons, making it less reliant on imports,” it stated.
Russia accounted for the greatest portion of India’s imports (36%); however, this was a far lower percentage than in 2015–19 (55%) and 2010–14 (72%). This change was linked to the evolving relationship between India and the West, particularly with the USA, France, and Israel.
In addition to reducing its arms imports, China has also assumed the role of an arms exporter. According to SIPRI, 44 states received Chinese arms in 2020–24, with Asia and Oceania receiving the majority of these deliveries (77%), followed by Africa (14%).
However, almost two-thirds (63 percent) of China’s arms exports went to just one state: Pakistan. In fact, China now supplies 81% of Islamabad’s weaponry in 2020–24, up from 74 % in the last five years, further solidifying its position as the country’s largest arms supplier.
The report added that even though China was the fourth-largest exporter of weapons, its proportion of global weapons sales fell from 6.2% to 5.9%, and its weapons shipments fell by 5.4% from 2015–19.
The report said several major importers refused to purchase Chinese weaponry for political reasons despite Beijing’s efforts to boost its military exports.
Countries like India and Japan may be unable to buy Chinese weapons because of their political differences and conflicts. However, Middle Eastern countries may be more skeptical of buying Chinese weapons out of fear of upsetting the United States.
“Many countries buy weapons, not just because they want weapons but also because they want a relationship with the supplier – an alliance,” the report stated, citing Middle Eastern countries as an example.
Chinese weapons have found a way in the export market for various reasons, which may or may not reflect their superiority over weapons from Russia or the West.
Writing for the EurAsian Times earlier, veteran journalist and geopolitical commentator Prakash Nanda argued, “Chinese arms also tend to carry fewer end-use restrictions and are monitored less rigorously than competitors’ arms exports, a factor that attracts customers with less access to other sources of military equipment because of political or economic reasons.”
India may nonetheless have reasons to worry as China continues to accelerate the indigenous production of state-of-the-art weapons, expanding its combat capability and strengthening the Pakistani military.
China has armed Pakistan with the J-10C fighter jet, which is often projected as a rival to the Indian Rafale. In addition, Pakistan is now speculated to sign an agreement for 40 Chinese J-35A stealthy fighter jets—a capability India would take a decade to build if it does not buy a fifth-generation aircraft from Russia or the United States.
In contrast, while India has made significant headway in expanding the indigenisation of weaponry and exporting some to countries like Armenia and Morocco, it is still dealing with significant delays in delivering critical arms like the Tejas fighter jet.
China’s strides in achieving self-sufficiency in arms manufacturing should worry India, as border tensions between India and China persist despite the thaw in ties achieved recently.
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