China's J-10 'Dragon' shows teeth in India-Pakistan combat debut

The skirmish is the first test of Beijing's military hardware against advanced Western technology.

- Mehul Srivastava, Charles Clover and Humza Jilani

Even before the fog of war had begun to lift, the Chengdu Aircraft Company's stock had started to soar. Almost three decades after first taking to the skies, the Chinese plane maker's first fighter jet, the J-10 Vigorous Dragon, had finally seen combat—and survived.

By 4am on May 7, Chinese diplomats in Islamabad were at the Foreign Ministry, poring over results from the first face-off between modern Chinese warplanes, replete with missiles and radars untested in battle, and advanced Western hardware deployed by India.

As evidence mounted, while remaining inconclusive, that a Pakistani pilot in the latest variant of the Vigorous Dragon may have shot down India's French-made Rafale jet, Chengdu's share price leapt more than 40 per cent in just two days.

"There's no better advertisement than a real combat situation," said Ms Yun Sun, a specialist in Chinese military affairs at the Stimson Centre in Washington. "This came as a pleasant surprise for China...the result is quite striking."

While India and Pakistan may be embroiled in their deepest skirmish in decades, the conflict is also a testing ground for equipment crucial to a different rivalry—that between China and the US-led Western alliance.

About 81 per cent of Pakistan's military equipment comes from China, including more than half its 400-strong fighter and ground attack aircraft, according to estimates by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. That reflects an "all weather friendship" that China has cultivated since the 1960s with Pakistan to try to ringfence India.

The material it provides Pakistan has evolved alongside China's own defence industry, said Mr Andrew Small, an expert on Pakistan-China relations at the German Marshall Foundation. "Aside from the cooperation on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, a lot of what China supplied used to be low-end stuff—tanks, artillery, small arms," he said.