"China Air Force Modernization: ‘Unprecedented in History’" Topic

"The People Liberation Army Air Force's (PLAAF) ongoing modernization is taking place at a rate unprecedented in history, the U.S. Department of Defense said on Thursday.

"The PLAAF is pursuing modernization on a scale unprecedented in its history and is rapidly closing the gap with Western air forces across a broad spectrum of capabilities including aircraft, command and control (C2), jammers, electronic warfare (EW), and data links," the Pentagon said in its annual report on China's military modernization, which was released on Thursday. This claim is new this year and was not included in the annual report in 2013.

Indeed, the report's section on the PLAAF was one of the most expanded parts of the report and seemed to indicate growing concern in Washington over China's air capabilities. After stating that the PLAAF is the largest Air Force in Asia and third largest in the world, the report noted that it is made up of "approximately 330,000 personnel and more than 2,800 total aircraft, not including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)." Of these 2,800 total aircraft, around 1,900 are combat aircraft, 600 of which are modern…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Considering that the PLAAF is mostly made up of 1950s and 1960s designs, yeah, they're modernizing at a pretty rapid rate. Completely skipping the 3rd gen fighters (F4 and competitors), and trying to jump from a limited number of 4th gen fighters to an entirely 4.5/5th gen fleet.