Russia Shows Video Sinking Chinese Warship: Gaffe or Provocation?
Russia was formerly the dominant player in China's biennial air show, the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition. This year, however, the participation was muted and without the participation of the aerobatic air teams of the Russian armed forces, but there was even more: a Russian defense company showed an advertising film in which a Russian military plane exploded a Chinese warship. The six-day exposition, which kicked off on November 8 in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, has attracted public attention in the context of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.
State-run media Global Times reported on Nov. 10 that the stand of Rosoboronexport – Russia's only state organization exporting the full range of military and dual-use products, services and technologies – was much smaller than in the past, with “a video display to show the Russian-developed Su-57E stealth fighter, Su-35 super maneuverable fighter, Su-34E fighter-bomber, etc.”
The Russian Knights and Swifts aerobatic team of the Russian Air Force, which used to perform more captivatingly at the Zhuhai air show, did not participate this year, which is very strange after 2000. The Chinese Air Force of the The People's Liberation Army was the only one to perform flight demonstrations.
According to China's Xinhua news agency, 49 Russian defense and dual-use companies participated in the exhibition, with more than 220 pieces of military equipment on display.
Why such a limited presence? Evidently the intervention in Ukraine is absorbing a lot of resources and the Russian industry has preferred to focus on something much more practical than participating in airshows.
Not only that: the Chinese Air Force showed its J-16 and J-20 stealth fighters, the latter being shown directly to the public for the first time. . Some analysts have commented that this indicates China is overtaking Russia in terms of military strength, and with the J-16 being heavily derived from, if not copied from, the Russian Su-30.
As if that wasn't enough, a Russian military aviation company has shown a video in which a Russian-made MiG-29 fighter launched an anti-ship missile attack on a Chinese warship, which instantly caught fire.
An online Chinese military media commented on the video: “At first glance, it was an ordinary computer-generated commercial video, but when you look closer at the bombed “enemy ship”, why does it look so familiar? The bombed warship was found to be the Chinese destroyer 052D.”
“This scene is way too embarrassing. After all, China and Russia [are] strategic partners,” the article reads.
The author claimed that India was involved in the film. “Some argue that… the Russian exhibitor entrusted the creation of the advertising film to an Indian company. In other words, the Indian side deliberately replaced the target ship of the Russian fighter attack with a Chinese-made warship .” But India's Eurasia Times denied the claim in a Nov. 11 article, saying the scene in the video was a Russian exhibitor's mistake and had nothing to do with India.
An incredible gaffe, or a small deliberate provocation? China has been plundering Russian technology to develop its own domestic military industry, but has since remained cold on the conflict in Ukraine. Then historically China fought a border conflict with the Soviet Union in 1969, although this event is now all but forgotten.
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The article Russia shows a video of sinking a Chinese warship: gaffe or provocation? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-russia-mostra-un-video-in-cui-affonda-una-nave-da-guerra-cinese-gaffe-o-provocazione/ on Mon, 21 Nov 2022 10:40:52 +0000.