When China unveiled its Chengdu J-20 “Mighty Dragon” fifth-generation warplane to the world in March 2017, America’s monopoly on stealth warplanes officially ended. That’s because the J-20 was not only another stealth warplane but was, and has become over the years, a true challenger to America’s vaunted fifth-generation warplane platforms. While the J-20 might not be as technically advanced as the F-22A Raptor, it certainly gives that system, and the F-35 Lightning II, a run for its money.  

And the Chinese keep innovating. At this year’s Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong Province, China unveiled a new variant of the “Mighty Dragon,” the J-20S. This plane was a truly unique bird. Not only was the J-20S the newest stealth warplane in China but it was also a two-seater bird. Never has any nation made a two-seater fifth-generation warplane.  

Some seek to downplay the innovation of China. Alex Hollings over at Sandboxx writes that, “China has a long and established history of borrowing (or outright stealing) designs, technologies, and even entire aircraft from its competitors, and evidence suggests the nation’s premiere stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon, is no exception.” 

Being a Copycat is Not Always Bad 

Let’s just take Chinese malfeasance as read. It’s a feature, not a bug, of China’s program of rapid development. It’s also quite common for rising powers to do this. For instance, the Americans spent a century committing today what we would call industrial espionage directed against what was then the dominant power of the day, the British Empire. China simply learned from the best in that way.  

Why reinvent the wheel, as it were, if you can simply borrow the design, perfect it, mass produce it as your own, and then innovate from there? 

Indeed, this is precisely what Ohio University business professor Oded Shenkar highlights in his 2010 book, Copycats. In Shenkar’s analysis of corporations, he found that most companies we would label as “imitators” survive and thrive far more often than the firms we would call “innovators.” China is much like that. Indeed, there’s a reason that in 2006 the business analyst, Ted C. Fishman, wrote an entire book asserting that the People’s Republic of China was just “China, Inc.” 

Saying that the J-20 is a rip-off of multiple other designs from China’s great state rival, the United States, or their frenemies next door, Russia, is not that devastating of a critique. The fact that China has been able to craft a system in the J-20 that can do real damage to the supposedly more advanced defenses of the United States and its allies is the real story here.  

After all, the J-20 has proven itself to be able to penetrate the sophisticated, American-designed air defense networks of neighboring nations, like Taiwan, with relative ease, and without ever being detected until after the fact. 

The J-20S is Dynamite for China 

Now add the J-20S and China has innovated a design that might originally have been imitated from the likes of American and Russian fifth-generation birds. The J-20S tandem seater allows for unmatched situational awareness for the flight crew.  

The bird has next-level electronic jamming and tactical command-and-control capabilities as well. It is truly the next great leap forward in fifth-generation warplane technology. When paired with China’s mass production capacity, the J-20 warplanes are going to be a formidable foe for the United States and its allies whenever the next great power war erupts.  

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon. 

Image Credit: Creative Commons and/or Shutterstock.