This extract was from the episode "The Journey to A World Class Air Force" By Yankee and Shilao. I paid for membership and listened to the whole two hours and it was worth every penny of it. They started from about ten years ago, describing in quite some detail what happened in a few major joint exercises between Pakistan and China.
This specific extract was about how in about 2019 Pakistan first participated in the Anatolian Phoenix 2019 and the US didn't allow EW pods to be used in that exercise. Pakistan's JF-17s apparently performed quite well. And then about a month later Pak went to China and China whipped out a "faux" J-16D, basically a J-16 with EW pods emulating a J-16D because at that time J-16D hasn't entered production yet. And for the first two days JF-17s got no locks or hits whatsoever and the "faux" J-16D basically took them out easily. Then after two days Chinese pilots flying J-10Cs on the Pak team basically said to them "Look we have fought these guys before, the only way to counter is if we use our J-10Cs as baits because it's a higher value target and that creates a short window for your JF-17s to lock and hit" This apparently greatly shook the Pak pilots because they had never thought of using a higher value plane as baits. At of note was at that time Pakistan also didn't realise how far the PL-15 could hit. They were pretty much thinking more or less the same as Indians prior to 7 May.
Apparently this exercise helped to make the PAF determine to buy the J-10C.
