China Times
The Chinese authorities have proposed the Ministry of Defence of India attack helicopters Harbin Z-9, and multi-purpose Changhe Z-11. “We would be happy to sell these helicopters to India and other countries,” said the PLA Colonel Yu Guo Yi. Currently, the Indian Defense Ministry is implementing a program to upgrade the helicopter fleet, buying equipment from Russia and the United States.
As the newspaper The Hindu noted, India is likely to be interested in the Chinese proposal. Although the Z-9 helicopters and Z-11 are developed relatively recently, they used outdated technology. China has no direct access to Western technology since 1989. In particular, Z-9 is a modifed copy of the European Helicopter AS365 Dauphin, whose first flight took place in 1975.
Over the past few years, China has also attempted to sell the Z-9 helicopters to Pakistan and several African countries, but did not succeed. According to the Chinese authorities, these countries refused to buy because of the backwardness of the technology, but acknowledged that China is making serious progress. The Ministry of Defence of India needs a fourth-generation helicopters.
According to the professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Shrikanth Kandapalli, an expert on China’s military industry, helicopters manufactured in China now belong to the second-third generation, the Chinese attack helicopters does not pale in comparison to the U.S. AH- 64D Apache, which India intends to purchase.
It should be noted that the relations between New Delhi and Beijing has strained due to a number of territorial disputes. In addition, China is one of the main allies of Pakistan, which has a number of territorial disputes with India.
