China ran campaign to discredit French Rafale fighter after India-Pakistan conflict, US commission says

By Shivam Patel

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -China ran a disinformation campaign to hurt sales of the French Rafale fighter jet after India used the planes in May for the first time against Chinese weapons deployed by its neighbour Pakistan, a bipartisan U.S. commission said this month in a report that the Chinese rejected as false information.

The report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was published on Tuesday and followed the signing of a letter of intent by Ukraine to obtain up to 100 Rafale fighters made by Dassault Aviation over the next 10 years.

More than half a dozen countries have bought the Rafale, whose reputation took a hit this year when Pakistan's Chinese-made J-10 fighter shot down at least one Rafale used by India during a four-day conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

China used fake social media accounts to share AI-generated images as well as video game images of supposed debris of aircraft that Chinese weaponry had destroyed, the commission said in a report to U.S. Congress.

"The report issued by the committee itself is false," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in response to a Reuters request for comment.

"The committee you mentioned has always held an ideological bias against China and has no credibility at all," Mao added.

India's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report, based on committee hearings and research that includes publicly available information and media reports, said that characterization of the May conflict as a "proxy war" would overstate China's role as an instigator, but Beijing leveraged the conflict to test and advertise the sophistication of its weapons. 

"Pakistan's use of Chinese weapons to down French Rafale fighter jets used by India also became a particular selling point for Chinese embassy defense sales efforts despite the fact that only three jets flown by India's military were reportedly downed and all may not have been Rafales," the report said. 

It added that Chinese embassy officials persuaded Indonesia to halt a purchase of Rafale jets already in process.

Indonesia's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its deputy defence minister said in June that the country was evaluating the J-10 fighter following an offer from China and would factor in reports that a Pakistani J-10 plane had shot down Indian jets.

(Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing; Editing by Hugh Lawson)