Stealth jet figher shows China’s military clout at airshow

CHINA showed its Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter in public for the first time yesterday, opening the country’s biggest meeting of aircraft makers and buyers with a show of its military clout.

Airshow China, in the southern city of Zhuhai, offers Beijing an opportunity to demonstrate its ambitions in civil aerospace and to underline its defence ambitions. China is set to overtake the US as the world’s top aviation market in the next decade.

Two J-20 jets, Zhuhai’s headline act, swept over dignitaries and hundreds of spectators and industry executives gathered at the show’s opening ceremony in a 60-second flypast, generating a deafening roar that was met with gasps and applause and set off car alarms in a parking lot at the site. “It is clearly a big step forward in Chinese combat capability,” said Bradley Perrett of Aviation Week, a veteran China watcher.

Analysts say it is too early to say to what extent the new Chinese fighter can match the radar-evading properties of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air-to-air combat jet, developed for the US Air Force and the J-20’s closest lookalike, or the latest strike jet in the US arsenal, Lockheed’s F-35.

Unofficial shots of a J-20 prototype fuelled discussion over the region’s power balance when first glimpsed by planespotters in 2010. Experts say China has been refining designs in hopes of narrowing a military gap with Washington.

Cao Qingfeng, an aircraft engineer watching the flypast, said the “stunning” display was a show of China’s strengthening aircraft industry and manufacturing – and Western officials agreed.

President Xi Jinping has pushed to toughen the armed forces.– Reuters