This line of thinking is prevalent in Indian media for decades. On the contrary, PAF has gone through numerous acquisitions involving thousands of aircrafts in the same decades. Pakistan military's pockets go very deep and because of their involvement in politics, they don't like to disclose this information. They have very lucrative business ventures in the country that generate a lot of income, and the black economy in Pakistan is probably 2-3 times greater than it's actual on-paper economy. In fact, if you add up all the military acquisitions of the past 15-20 years, you may find that it doesn't really fit into the defence budget at all.
Adding to that - it isn't just Indian media, it's negative pushback of long line of propaganda, both positive(US: 5th gen is expensive, no one else can afford it) and negative(F-35 is expensive, no one can afford it). Adjusted for chained dollars(i.e. in modern USD), F-22 wasn't the most expensive US fighter jet, it was early F-14A together with F-14D.
5th gen jets don't cost special money compared to previous generation examples. Yes, they're far more maintenance heavy - but maintenance heavy jets existed before as well.
J-10(CE) and J-35 fundamentally carry most of the same subsystems, and there's no special price differential between two.
Yes, J-35 airframe is more interesting - but with well oiled production line, it honestly doesn't matter too much. Otherwise, it's price of second(but smaller/cheaper) engine, and EODAS (set of good wide angle IR cameras). Not exactly a dealbreaker.
Pakistan is an economy which consistently can afford modern fighter procurement. Yes, it's very poor per capita; individual citizens don't buy fighter jets, country does. And Pakistani economy is bigger than lower part of the list of F-35 buyers(sits right on top of Czech republic, in fact). Pakistan's economy is also larger than economy of Algeria(su-57e).
Ultimately, fighters aren't supercarriers - it was always a force generation (common sense), rather than absolute restriction. But in a scenario, where force multipliers (stealth jets) improve the whole force more than a larger procurement of more modest jets - it's honestly a dead argument.
