China Is Quietly Becoming Its Neighbors’ Biggest Arms Dealer
Over the past 15 years, China has increasingly become the dominant military power in Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. It has done so primarily in the way that defense experts and political leaders usually think of military dominance: de facto control over large swaths of a region, and the ability to fend off other major powers.
For example, China is aggressively enforcing its controversial claim to over 90 percent of the South China Sea, through both island reclamation projects to build up reefs and outcroppings and naval actions to keep nearby states from accessing disputed islands and maritime features. Chinese aircraft carriers also continue to push further into the Pacific Ocean, demonstrating Beijing’s potential ability to project “blue-water” naval power against its main rival, the United States. Beijing also has built up a massive arsenal of anti-ship and anti-air missiles to deter challenges from the U.S. and its allies.
Yet China is also becoming a leading military force in the region in another, less visible way: Once a huge buyer of foreign arms, China is now a rising exporter of increasingly sophisticated weapons. According to a comprehensive new study by the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, China’s share of arms sales to Southeast Asian states has grown significantly over the past decade.
Meanwhile, those of Russia—formerly the region’s top supplier—have plummeted, while U.S. sales have persistently lagged in parts of the region. In fact, Washington’s security assistance to Southeast Asia declined even in the 2010s, at the height of the Obama administration’s promised “rebalance to Asia,” and it continues to fall.
In South Asia, meanwhile, China’s arms exports have grown sharply in the past decade, and Beijing now stands as a leading supplier of weaponry to virtually all of India’s neighbors. These arms sales—along with growing military exercises and defense dialogues with Southeast and South Asian nations—are fostering closer links between Chinese generals and their regional counterparts, and building these states’ dependencies on Chinese weapons platforms.
China’s growing role as a regional arms provider is consistent with its boost in military exports worldwide. It now sells around $3 billion globally in arms to over 40 countries, making it the world’s fourth-biggest arms exporter behind the U.S., Russia and France.
China’s sales of weaponry and closer military-to-military relations with neighboring states are notable not only because of their scale, but also because of their unique security dynamics. Many of China’s neighbors fear the possibility of a direct conflict with China in the future, yet they increasingly rely on Chinese arms and defense ties. This fear among arms purchasers that they may one day possibly fight the country supplying those weapons does not exist for clients in other parts of the world.
Thailand, a U.S. treaty ally from which the Pentagon would expect to stage troops in the event of a conflict with China, is a case in point. Though the country still has extensive defense cooperation with the United States, current and former U.S. defense officials have told us that they increasingly distrust its strategic reliability. Notably, Thailand’s military commanders have built close personal links to China, after bristling at the U.S. for freezing security assistance and downgrading ties following Thailand’s 2014 military coup.
Beyond its weapons exports, China has stepped up its security influence in the region by expanding military-to-military cooperation.
Thailand’s leaders are revealing this realignment toward Beijing in several ways, including new joint military exercises and close collaboration in combating drug trafficking. But the shift shows up most clearly in arms sales. Before 2017, the Lowy report notes, the U.S. was the biggest provider of arms to Thailand. But since then, China has “vastly surpassed” the United States. Today, Beijing is not only Thailand’s biggest source of defense equipment; it provides nearly three times as much as the U.S. does. Should Thailand’s generals stage another coup this year, which seems highly plausible if they cannot tolerate the results of fresh elections that are likely later this year, they almostsurely will turn to Beijing first for support.
China’s position as the region’s primary purveyor of arms can be explained in part because of the lack of strings attached to many of these sales. For example, Beijing’s arms sales to Myanmar, along with its ties to the ruling military junta as well as some armed opposition groups, have made it by far the most important external actor in that country’s ongoing civil war, even as many leading democracieshave moved in the opposite direction by adding more sanctions against the country’s military government.
At the same time, recent improvements in the quality of Chinese arms exports have also made them more attractive to prospective buyers, as witnessed by the edge China’s sophisticated weapons seemed to give Pakistan in its conflict with India earlier this year. China apparently sold Pakistan PL-15 air-to-air missiles and cutting-edge fighter planes, which reportedly shot down a highly advanced French-made Rafale fighter used by India.
The apparent success of China’s weapons in the Pakistan-India conflict has helped Chinese defense contractors win over even more clients in Asia. Pakistan is importing more Chinese arms than ever before, while Bangladesh, which previously tried to balance between India and China, is now tilting toward Beijing, importing about 70 percent of its arms from China. Malaysia, which has similarly tilted toward China, is showing clear interest in buying the Chinese J-10CE fighter jets used by Pakistan. Even Indonesia, historically suspect of Beijing, has indicated strong interest in purchasing Chinese-made YJ-12E missiles for coastal defense, as well as anti-ship missiles and other items.
Beyond its exports of weaponry, China has stepped up its security influence in the region by expanding military-to-military cooperation at a rapid pace. Between 2017 and 2024, Beijing established 10 new defense agreements with Southeast Asian states. And last year, Maj. Gen. Zhang Baoqun—deputy director of China’s Office for International Military Cooperation—signed a new military assistance agreement with the Maldives and traveled to Nepal for meetings about new joint exercises and training programs for the Nepali military, although given Nepal’s current political chaos the future of those agreements is hard to predict.
China also held multiple joint naval exercises and trainings with Sri Lanka and bolstered agreements with Pakistan and Bangladesh.Beijing has complemented these bilateral cooperation deals with larger conferences that bring together regional military leaders in mainland China, like the convening of top defense officials at the recent ministerial meeting ahead of the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
China has also inaugurated or expanded a number of joint exercises with nearby states. These exercises include: the annual China-Laos Friendship Shield; the Blue Strike, Falcon Strike and Joint Strike trainings conducted with Thailand; the new Golden Friendship joint exercises between China and Bangladesh, and many others.
These agreements and new joint exercises represent more than symbolic cooperation. They indicate rising levels of trust in China among military and political leaders across parts of Southeast Asia and South Asia. The expansion of ties at levels below top generals boosts trust as well, as with recent “service-level” military staff exchanges held with countries like Indonesia.
This growing trust suggests that, in the event of any regional conflict, such countries would not join any U.S.-led effort to confront Beijing militarily—and may even side with China. Shantanu Roy-Chaudhury, an expert on military and defense strategy in South Asia, has written that China’s increasing number of exchanges and trainings are even allowing it to oversee and control other countries’ military planning and operations. In one such example, he notes, China is getting an “an opportunity to shape Bangladesh’s military doctrine and operational procedures while creating interpersonal ties between the [two countries’] armed forces.”
To be sure, China has not eliminated all competitors. In a composite consideration of arms sales, joint activities and dialogues, the United States remains by far the top regional defense partner in Southeast Asia, though not throughout South Asia. And leaders in both regions remain fearful of China, which could inhibit even closer defense links in the near future. But under President Donald Trump’s administration, the United States has become much more unpopular in India and across Southeast Asia, leading many states to reconsider a closer alignment with China. If they ultimately go in that direction, China could further entrench its regional military dominance.
Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Annabel Richter is research associate for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.