Chinese A-5 FANTAN, by Unknown Artist, 1979 This DIA artist’s conception of the A-5 FANTAN, misidentified at the time as an F-9, was done in 1979 when the Chinese were still developing a design for a new front-line fighter. A year later, the Chinese showed US officials the prototype of the F-8 during a visit to the Shenyang works. China cancelled the F-9 in favor of the F-8. It was a variant of the F-8, an F-8-II, which collided with a US EP-3 surveillance plane in 2001, precipitating a crisis between the countries.