In response to the aviation experts’ recent observation that China’s J-20 stealth-fighter prototype looked like a bigger version the U. S. F-22 Raptor, the Chinese military officials refuted the claims that the country obtained secret US technology for developing its new stealth fighter.

With China arguing that it depended on domestic innovation to manufacture the plane, which has drawn new international attention to the country’s military advances, Li Daguang - a professor at the People's Liberation Army's National Defense University – remarked: “China is completely capable of making its own stealth fighter jet.”

Daguang further added: “I think we developed the J-20 largely on our own research, but at the same time learning from existing foreign models. Many countries have already possessed stealth-jet technology.... Stealth materials are not considered highly sophisticated or confidential at all.”

The stealth-espionage controversy surrounding the J-20 was triggered by the Associated Press’ Sunday report which quoted Balkan military officials saying that China had probably learnt some of its stealth technology from the pieces its agents obtained of the debris of a US F-117 - the US stealth fighter – that was shot down by a Serbian antiaircraft missile during the Kosovo war in 1999.

A day after the report, a US court in Hawaii handed out a 32-year prison sentence to Noshir Gowadia – a former US B-2 stealth-bomber engineer – for selling stealth-missile technology, with potential applications on fighter jets, to China.