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Fun little note: The afterburning turbofan engines used in this aircraft are supposedly similar in performance to the P&W F119 engines used in the Raptor. The company behind the engine is/was working on a high bypass version which aims to power the Y-20 [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an_Y-20

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There is speculation that those are still in the prototype stage and the current ones are running on Russian Saturns. China is still catching up in turbofans that have sufficient power and reliability (they can get one or the other, but not both ATM).

They should team up with Renault.

High performance turbofans and modern semiconductors are the most closely kept technologies in the west and Russia. You can’t easily reverse engineer them from end products, they are all about process. It’s reasonable that these are the last technologies left for China to master.

Partnerships are out of the question.

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