Is China helping Pakistan source an incapacitating chemical agent to be used in law enforcement in some of the troubled areas of Pakistan such as Balochistan? Confiscation of a controlled chemical by Indian customs in Tamil Nadu’s Kattupalli port on May 8 this year has raised concerns that the China-Pakistan nexus on surreptitious transport of sensitive material is now venturing into uncharted territory as well.
Shanghai To Karachi
The chemical in question, known as ‘ortho-chloro benzylidene malononitrile (CS), was shipped by a Chinese firm, Chengdu Shichen Trading Co. Ltd, to Rohail Enterprises, a Rawalpindi-based company. The consignment was loaded onto a carrier vessel ‘Hyundai Shanghai’ (sailing under the Cyprus flag) on April 18 at Shanghai Port.
According to sources, the vessel reached Kattupalli Port around 11 pm on May 8 on its voyage to Karachi. An intelligence tip-off had alerted the customs authorities, who got the consignment offloaded. Investigations revealed that in addition to being on a controlled list under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the use and transport of the CS chemical is also governed by the Wassenaar Arrangement and is placed in India’s dual-use items list SCOMET.
Incapacitating Chemical Agent
Given the usage of the CS chemical as an incapacitating agent, it is possible that it could be used by Pakistani law enforcement agencies against rebel groups. Besides raising human rights concerns, the seizure also indicates potential complicity of China in trying to protect its own interests in Balochistan, which are increasingly coming under strain with frequent attacks on Chinese assets and personnel.
China Helping Itself
China, as is well-known, has invested heavily in various projects under the ambit of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC in Balochistan. However, these projects have remained a non-starter due to opposition by Baloch sub-nationalist groups. Covert supply of controlled substances by China to Pakistan suggests that Beijing is doing this deliberately to protect its own interests in Pakistan.
European and American regulators and intelligence agencies have kept a close watch on unchecked trading of dual-use technologies by China and Pakistan. But are these efforts enough is the question being asked in some European capitals now.
Germany Wary
In June 2023, an annual report released by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution for the German state of Baden-Württemberg highlighted: “Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and Syria are still pursuing such efforts. They aim to complete existing arsenals, perfect the range, deployability and effectiveness of their weapons and develop new weapons systems. They are trying to obtain the necessary products and relevant know-how, inter alia, through illegal procurement efforts in Germany.”
An analysis of this report suggests that ‘bypass countries’ like Turkey and China could help Pakistan and North Korea that are in the business of illegal and unrestricted proliferation to route their proliferation weapons and help the business to grow.
In addition, Ilya Kahn, a citizen of the United States, Israel and Russia, and resident of Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California, who was arrested by US authorities on January 17 this year for his alleged involvement in a years-long scheme to secure and unlawfully export sensitive technology from the United States for the benefit of a Russian business, used a network of businesses in China and other countries to illegally transfer hundreds of thousands of semiconductors to sanctioned business with ties to Russian military.
Chinese Firms Sanctioned
In April 2024, The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) sanctioned three Chinese companies—Tianjin Creative Source International Trade Co Ltd, Granpect Company Limited, and Xi’an Longde Technology Development Company—for supplying key components to Pakistan’s ballistic missile programme.
China Acting As Hub
In May 2024, the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN) of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs released ‘Constitutional ProtectionReport-2023’ (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2023), which reviewed the global security situation in 2023 and its implications on Austria’s national security. The report emphasised the role of China, which occupies a special position globally when it comes to proliferation, and mentioned that China acted as a global buyer for sanctioned states in the European market and also in Austria.
It said that Pakistan has traditionally maintained good relations with China, besides its procurement processes for dual-use goods from Europe often involve fake companies and dealer networks in the Arabian Peninsula. It mentioned that Pakistani proliferation attempts were increasingly active in 2023 through intermediaries in China which are not sanctioned and are civilian in nature. These intermediaries to whom Austrian companies deliver the goods are usually no longer subject to the de facto control by Austrian exporters and this is how China becomes a global hub for sanctioned goods, an assessment by a couple of intelligence agencies have concluded.