Argentina's Chinese Dragon

Spinners · November 16, 2022

Chengdu J-14 'Dragón' - Grupo 5, Fuerza Aérea Argentina, 2022

In July 2019 ambassadors from 22 nations of the UN signed a joint letter to the UNHRC condemning China's mistreatment of the Uyghurs and the UK urged the Chinese government to close the Xinjiang 're-education camps'. Relations between the UK and China became further strained when the UK opposed the Hong Kong national security law on the grounds that it was a flagrant breach of the agreement between the UK and China. In July 2020 Liu Xiaoming, China's ambassador to the UK, stated that the UK "will bear the consequences" if it continues to treat China as a hostile country. Despite this, in October 2020, the UK Parliament's Defence Committee strongly recommended that the UK government should remove all Huawei equipment from its 5G networks earlier than planned and this set back relations even further.

Almost as a petty act of revenge, the Chinese government immediately gifted 8 Chengdu J-14 'Eagle Dragon' stealth fighters to Argentina with options on a further batch of 12 at a reduced price with a long payback period. During a visit to Argentina in November 2020, Xi Jinping (the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) wished Argentina every success in it's "struggle against colonial powers lurking in it's backyard". This act was clearly designed to antagonise the UK government but the initial batch of 8 J-14's were eagerly received by a seriously depleted Fuerza Aérea Argentina who had literally a single handful of Lockheed Martin A-4AR Fightinghawk fighter-bombers available at any one time. The first J-14's arrived at the Port of Río Gallegos as deck cargo aboard the Xiang Hua Men (a Panamanian flagged cargo vessel) and were assembled by Chengdu technicians at the nearby Piloto Civil Norberto Fernández International Airport. Entering service in March 2022 with Grupo 5 de Caza at Villa Reynolds Airport near the city of Villa Mercedes in the province of San Luis, the J-14's have transformed the Fuerza Aérea Argentina and the options on the additional batch of 12 have been taken alongside an additional example purchased as an attrition replacement for a J-14 that crashed near Córdoba in October 2022.