China is currently dominating the air warfare innovation, But this success of  Chinese development is often seen as a quick and sudden success, In reality China’s success originates from a long standing struggle.

This race started all the way in the 1980s when China was struggling and China’s air fleet relied only on old but glorified USSR jets from the 1950s, such as the MIG 21. China also made several jets on there own, but it would not be a lie to classify them as cheap copies of the MIG 17 and the MIG19, These copied aircraft were named as the J5 and J7. China’s luck when Gorbachev visited Beijing in 1989 and offered military trade once again. A year later in 1990, The Chinese delegation visited Soviet Union in 1990 and they were shown 2 planes that were very advanced then what the Chinese had, These two planes were the SU27 and the MIG29. USSR tried to convince the Chinese delegation to buy the MIG, due to long standing chinese reliance on the MIGs, But China insisted on the SU27. The Chinese cited its larger combat radius, advanced fly by wire system, and superior engine performance. The sale got approved in December 1990, and 3 jets were delivered in 1991, before the collapse of USSR.

Money hungry Russia continued this sale, some payments were even made in form of food supplies. This was also a desperate time for China, as they had just lost access to the American and European defense markets after the Tinammen Square massacre of 1989. In 1995 China made its first masterstroke, which is seen as a geopolitical betrayal. In 1995China expressed that they no longer want to  import the SU27 and wanted to assemble Su27 kits in China to which the Russians consented, but only after assembling 100 SU27 the Chinese terminated the contract, the original contract was of  jets. After assembling so many SU27, China had cracked how to reverse engineer the jet and announced there J11B. The Russians declared it as an “illegal pirate design” They even said that it was a way to avoid the Russian royalty payments, but this was much more then that it was China’s first move towards air dominance.

During the 2000s China played another move, which was a straight betrayal to the long standing Russia China relations. China was disappointed by the Russians when they refused to sell 2 SU33s to China for 100m dollars in 2006, but China had made precautions for this kind of refusal as they now relied on the T 10K3, which was an early prototype of the SU33, China was unable to copy the SU33 deeply but it provided insights into its framework.

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Now China only lacked one thing, they had every piece of the puzzle, from the aerodynamics to the avionics, that problem was engine. China relied on Lyulka AL 31 jet engine that were originally made for the SU27s, Without this engine the Chinese jets would not exist even the J20. China’s homemade WS 10A Taihung engines were terrible compared to the Russian engine. The WS10 A Taihung had to be hauled after 30 hours compared to the Lyulka AL 31 which clocked in at 400hours. China bought 24 SU35s from Russia just to study more powerful saturn engines.

China’s research on Aerial warfare was not just limited to the Russians, they also commenced Operation Byzantine Hades. Under this operation, A team of Chinese hackers made there way into the Lockheed Martin database. Later the Pentagon confirmed that terabytes of data was compromised regarding the F35 LIGHTING and the F22 Raptor. This was a huge breakthrough as it was China’s first time with insights about the American planes. After this there was the Su Bin case, A chinese national named Su bin and two other unidentified Chinese nationals were charged with stealing over 630,000 files relating to the aviation of the C17 Globemasters, F22 Raptor and the F35 lightning.

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 As a result of this operations the J20 flew for the first time as a prototype, but America and Russia dismissed it by declaring a cheap copy of various jets. At that they were not wrong, but they would be wrong today. The J20 hits the speed of Mach 2, faster than the F35 Lightning but slower than the  F22 Raptor as it has a top speed of Mach 2.25. The J 20 is armed with the PL 15 missiles , Its effectiveness can be seen against the French Rafales in the Pak India war.  Pakistan was able to shoot down 7 jets with these missiles. There is no doubt that the J20 is the best plane after the F22 Raptor, but China’s ability to mass  produce the J20 maneuvers the qualitative performance of the Americans.

It would be safe to say that China is now leading in terms of innovation and progress, In a short span of 25 years they over threw monopolized warfare giants from the west, and is now the only established power of the East. China’s ability to reverse engineer the Russian jets, and the daring to hack Lockheed Martin servers have led them to the J20 that is the best of both technologies.