China remains a reliable friend of Pakistan and has helped maintain a balance of power in the region. Historically, both countries have had to face discrimination in technology acquisition, both from the western states as well as the former Soviet Union, in the latter case after the Sino-Soviet split in 1959. This is particularly true for civil nuclear technology where China was a late-starter and was successful in producing its own nuclear power reactor in the late 1980s.
Pakistan, for its part, had initiated a broad-based nuclear programme in 1972 to develop the nuclear fuel cycle which was supplemented by a long-term plan for an ambitious nuclear energy base, designed to meet projected energy shortfalls. Similar goals were being pursed by South Korea, Iran, and Brazil at the point in time whose nuclear energy plans were dependent on western countries. Following the commissioning of the country’s first power reactor KANUPP in November 1972, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) requested another unit from Canada, but got a firm no, while India had been supplied with two similar CANDU type power reactors with full transfer of technology.
Pakistan’s long-term nuclear energy programme called for the setting up of 24 power reactors by the turn of the century and in 1973, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) endorsed these projections for atomic energy to generate electricity.
Given the country’s limited resource base, Pakistan was entirely dependent on international cooperation from the nuclear supplier states to meet its energy shortfalls through nuclear power. While Pakistan was negotiating deals for the supply of fuel cycle facilities with European countries (all under safeguards), India carried out its first nuclear test on May 18, 1974 and dubbed it as a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE).
Using a civilian research reactor (CIRUS) for producing plutonium, India conducted this test only when its own nuclear programme had matured and could be sustained without any foreign assistance, while Pakistan was just beginning to develop the infrastructure and technology for a modest programme of its own.
Consequently, the 47-nation NSG or the Nuclear Suppliers Group was created in 1975 that was designed to control and regulate the supply of civilian and dual-use nuclear technologies to recipient states. Soon thereafter, several recipient states seeking to develop nuclear energy programmes and safeguarded (civilian) fuel cycle facilities had to bear the brunt of India’s perfidy.
With the genesis of the NSG, no western country showed any interest in supplying a power reactor, even under safeguards to Pakistan, unless it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state and opened up its entire nuclear programme for international inspection. Therefore, when plans were approved in March 1976 to seek foreign assistance for installing a 600 MW power reactor at Chashma, it found no willing supplier for almost a decade.
Having helped India establish a sound nuclear power and fuel cycle infrastructure, the western nuclear suppliers decided to prevent Pakistan from building a fuel cycle and nuclear energy programme, even under safeguards. Meanwhile, Pakistan directed all resources towards completing the nuclear fuel cycle on its own and developing a nuclear deterrent capability.
The only country willing to help Pakistan re-start its stalled nuclear energy programme was China. After intensive negotiations spanning over a year, the breakthrough came on September 15, 1986 when China and Pakistan entered into a long-term comprehensive civil cooperation agreement. Signed by the Pakistani foreign minister Sahibzada Yakub Khan and the Chinese Minister in-charge of State Science and Technology Commission, Mr. Song Zian in a grand ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the ceremony was attended by the then Chinese Prime Minister Mr. Zhao Ziang and Mr. Munir Ahmad Khan, Chairman of the PAEC.
This was also the year when Pakistan was elected as Chairman of the IAEA Board of Governors for a one-year term for the second time in history. Pakistan and China immediately declared this comprehensive civil nuclear agreement subject to IAEA safeguards so as to re-affirm the completely peaceful nature of the deal and dispel apprehensions about nuclear proliferation. This historic 1986 agreement effectively broke an international embargo against Pakistan for the supply of nuclear power plants and was concluded before China became a signatory to the NPT (1992) and long-before it joined the NSG (2004).
It paved the way for Pakistan to acquire and install at least four (two commissioned and two under construction) nuclear power plants in the past two decades. Situated at the Chashma Nuclear Power Complex, these reactors are under the safeguards of the IAEA. All future Sino-Pakistan civilian nuclear energy cooperation was designed to be “grandfathered” under the long-standing 1986 civil nuclear cooperation agreement which was to be for an initial period of 30 years and extendable every five years thereafter unless any one party decided otherwise.
The civil nuclear agreement stated that both countries “shall cooperate in the design, construction and operation of nuclear research and power reactors and associated facilities, and other fields as may be mutually agreed upon.” Therefore, China does not require prior NSG approval for the supply of additional power reactors to Pakistan as a framework for such cooperation already pre-dates China’s membership of the NPT and NSG.
However, 1986 deal provided a broad framework for cooperation in the peaceful uses of atomic energy wherein separate agreements and contracts would later be signed for the supply of indigenous Chinese Qinshan-type power reactors. In November 1989, the Chinese Prime Minister announced that China and Pakistan had concluded an agreement for the supply of the C-1, 300 MW power reactor to be built at Chashma, for which the formal contract was signed in December 1991. This offer was made within a few weeks of China having commissioned its first 300 MW indigenous power reactor design, which Pakistan readily accepted.
This was the first instance of “South-South” cooperation in the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The C-1 power reactor was commissioned in 2000 and within four years another contract for 300 MW C-2 was signed. It was commissioned in 2011 which was followed by another agreement signed on April 28, 2009 for the construction of two additional 340 MW power reactors C3 and C4 at the same site which are expected to be commissioned by 2016 and 2017 respectively.
The latest of such sales includes a contract, reportedly signed in early 2013, for the supply of two 1100 MW, indigenous Chinese ACP-1000 power reactors which would be installed near KANUPP, Karachi. The ACP-1000 sale is reportedly concluded under a separate deal signed between the two countries in 2003, a year before China’s accession to the NSG. All sales of Chinese power reactors to Pakistan are approved by the IAEA and will remain under its safeguards.
Even as Sino-Pak civil nuclear cooperation unduly perturbs many in India and the west, stories of alleged Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s indigenous nuclear weapons programme in the early 1980s also abound. The combined effect of these contentions have served as a catalyst for all those who wish to embarrass China as a responsible nuclear weapon state and showcase Pakistan’s indigenous nuclear capability as a borrowed, smuggled or gifted product.
These claims hinge upon reports that a Chinese bomb design from its 1966 test (CHIC-4) was allegedly transferred to Pakistan in 1981-82 that became the basis of its weapons programme. However, a closer examination reveals a different chain of events. Pakistan began work on the theoretical design of the bomb as early as December 1972 with the formation of the Theoretical Physics Group in the PAEC.
This design work was completed by 1978 using de-classified data from the Manhattan Project and homegrown Research and Development. PAEC was thus able to conduct the first cold test of a working nuclear device on March 11, 1983. As work on improving the designs continued, four to five different designs were developed and tested in 24 additional cold (hydrodynamic) tests by the early to mid 1990s. Pakistan’s own implosion device, first cold tested in March 1983, reportedly weighed less than half the size of the Indian design (1400 kg) tested in 1974, whereas the purported CHIC-4 was too bulky in size (1300 kg) and thus undeliverable. Pakistan tested six indigenous weapon designs in May 1998 hot tests which it had cold tested in previous two decades, including miniaturized designs suitable for delivery by ballistic missiles in addition to sub-kiloton weapons.
Similarly, when it was revealed that Pakistan had initiated construction of the 50 MW Khushab-1 plutonium production reactor in the mid-1980s, it was alleged, especially in Indian publications, that the reactor was supplied by China or was being built with active Chinese assistance. Such claims are in circulation even today. Yet the fact is that Khushab-1 reactor technology, like that of subsequent reactors at the Khushab Nuclear Complex are indigenous Pakistani designs, derived from the well-known Canadian NRX-type reactor design. The Khushab-1 reactor utilized Pakistani manpower and eighty-two percent local materials and equipment for its construction.
Critics of Pakistan-China civil nuclear cooperation also seem unable to distinguish between a power reactor and a plutonium production reactor. Therefore when they claim that the power reactors at Chashma (under IAEA safeguards) are being used to produce plutonium for Pakistan’s weapons programme, they demonstrate their own confusion or ignorance even though it is well-known that production of weapons-grade plutonium is being carried out at Pakistan’s indigenous nuclear reactor complex at Khushab which is outside any safeguards and not at any civilian facility.
Therefore, any claims of China’s continued assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear “weapons” programme under the garb of civil cooperation are unsubstantiated.
If parallels are to drawn, then the Indo-US civil nuclear deal epitomizes the violation of universal non-proliferation norms whereby unprecedented support has been extended to a de-factor nuclear weapon state, which is a non-signatory of the NPT but would now enjoy all the benefits of an NPT signatory state minus the obligations that come with acquiring such status.
More recently, this discrimination is clearly reflected in the approach of the big powers at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, where existing asymmetries in fissile material stockpiles are conveniently ignored while aiming to cap future production in countries like Pakistan which account for less than one percent of the global stocks. Therefore, the application of discriminatory and double standards in South Asia based on selectivity will only result in jeopardizing non-proliferation objectives and the prospects of a durable peace in the region.
The writer is a defense analyst based in Islamabad, currently in the U.S. on a fellowship
