Aircraft
New Chinese Fighters Tap Russian, U.S. Technology
It remains unclear how far Chinese fighter manufacturers Shenyang and Chengdu have progressed their respective FC/J-31 and J-20 designs.
Chengdu J-20
Chengdu J-20

When the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) acquired its first tranche of Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27SK fighters in the early 1990s, long-time observers of China’s industrial base asked two questions. The first was how long would it be before Chinese state-controlled aerospace industry was able to reverse-engineer and build unlicensed copies of the Su-27—as they had done with Russia’s Mikoyan MiG-21 decades before.