Pakistan has seemingly used Chinese jets to shoot down India’s planes, which has shown China’s military capabilities and has implications for Western allies like Taiwan, British publication The Guardian reports, citing military analysts.

Pakistan said it had shot down several Indian Air Force fighter jets with Chinese-made missiles fired from Chinese-made J10-C jets, The Guardian said, which has since been confirmed by US officials to Reuters and by French officials to CNN.

“The use of J-10Cs by Pakistan would mark the first time the Chinese planes — and the PL-15 missiles they were carrying — have been used in combat anywhere in the world, giving military analysts a rare glimpse of their capabilities, and China’s military, the PLA, a crucial test case,” the British newspaper said.

Andrew Small, a Berlin-based senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told The Guardian that China gets particular benefit from seeing its weapons used against Western equivalents.

“It gives them a chance to assess their performance under far more complex and challenging conditions than usual, and with Pakistan, this is not just about the fighter jets themselves, it’s about the missiles, the radar systems, and the whole technology spine of the Pakistani military, from electronic warfare capabilities to satellite systems,” he was quoted as saying.

Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre, was quoted as saying that “technically, India did not use American weapon systems during this round.

“But the surprising victory of Chinese J-10 and PL-15 [missiles] will force people to reconsider the military balance of power in the event of a Taiwan contingency.”

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