Pakistan on May 7 had informed a delegation of Chinese embassy officials that the Chengdu J-10 Vigorous Dragon, a Chinese multipurpose fighter jet, had brought down India’s French-made Rafales, France 24 reported.
It was just hours after India launched its Operation Sindoor with an opening salvo of strikes on Pakistan in response to a deadly April 22 terror attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan for the attack, Islamabad denied the allegation, but was nonetheless prepared for India’s military riposte.
So were the Chinese weapon systems acquired by Pakistan in recent years.
When the Chinese delegation, led by Beijing’s ambassador in Islamabad, arrived at Pakistan’s foreign ministry, they were promptly given the good news, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told parliament later that day.
“Our jet fighters … shot down three Indian Rafales, three Rafales [that] are French,” Dar told the National Assembly. “Ours were J-10Cs,” he noted, referring to the Chengdu J-10 Vigorous Dragon, a Chinese multipurpose fighter jet that was untested in an active combat zone until the latest India-Pakistan armed clash.
In the aftermath of the ceasefire, attention has focused on Islamabad’s new range of Chinese weapons and defence systems that finally saw combat during the May 7-10 India-Pakistan armed clash. It came as India’s newly acquired arsenal of mostly Western arms took on China’s increasingly sophisticated military hardware.
‘Big victory for China in terms of perception’
The odds were in New Delhi’s favour ahead of its retaliation for the April 22 terror attack. With its first strikes, India signalled a break from its traditional doctrine of strategic restraint, hitting targets not just in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and remote border regions, but in the country’s political heartland Punjab province.
India’s escalation raised international alarm bells on the second day of clashes, when it hit the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad. Situated just a short distance from the headquarters of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which oversees and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, the Nur Khan base is a key hub for the country’s military.
Pakistan’s claim that its J-10 fighter jets brought down India’s French-made Rafales sparked exultation on Chinese social media platform, Weibo, with many users speculating that buyers will probably soon be flocking to Chinese arms manufacturers.
“We always had the impression that Chinese weapons were the same as Chinese goods in a way. We assumed that Chinese weapons are inferior. This is not the case anymore,” said Carlotta Rinaudo, a China expert at the International Team for the Study of Security Verona.
“We saw China initially just selling tanks and smaller weapons, especially to Pakistan. Now we see very modern and sophisticated weapons being sold that are actually being very effective. So, the lesson that we should all take out of this is that perhaps Chinese weapons are not inferior to Western weapons. We should change that paradigm that we’ve been holding for very long.”
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