Their electronics are dubious and their proclaimed indigenous engines have been made with direct Russian involvement.
This is a massive generalization. Yes some of their products are dubious, however many others are not. The fact of the matter is that in Asia, after Russia, Chinese are the biggest arms exporters. In the past decade, they have realized that they need to invest more on the high-tech side, it will not happen overnight but just based on the PAF experience, the quality of hardware has definitely undergone a generational change. Avionics are no different. On the commercial side they are producing many multi-purpose components for US and European companies and the technology is bleeding into their weapons program. Secondly, on the issue of FC-20, Pakistan will probably not go with something that is entirely Chinese just to mature the platform and get it into service with already well developed Western technology. So a lot of the above problems may not apply to the PAF plans.
Now i seriously doubt their claims. In either case, the benefit of customizing a plane is only when you are dissatisfied with the product-which you would be with Chinese planes.
PAF has never bought an aircraft that has not undergone some customization. I see no exception to the case in the future either.
With US plane, like the blk 52, you already get more than what you can possibly procure, barring things like AESA(which again, PAF will obtain in the future from US itself).
Yes but what we get from the Chinese is cheaper and fairly elaborate too. Chinese are producing fairly good quality PGMs and pods which would be harder to get from the US and European sources. The jury is out on AESA, Chinese are working on it as are the US/Western companies on products such as Sabre (AESA for Viper). Who knows where we will end up on the AESA front..
Case in point-India modified the Su-30K to Su-30MKI not because it fancied doing so, but because of lack of capabilities. Had the product been as good as the MKI or if it even had an upgrade path designed by Russians which would have incorporated new features steadily, India would not have gone to third parties.
I agree. See my earlier point above.
The way i see things-going for Chinese products has a lot to do with soft loans or friendship prices and no fear of sanctions-but as with everything you have to compromise-on the equipment level.
Initially it was all about cheap quantity. Now in different products, the quality is also coming up. This is owing to China's own indigenous requirements.