The Russian Aerospace Force’s most advanced jet fighter, the Sukhoi Su-57 (NATO reporting name Felon) arrived in China on Monday in advance of the upcoming 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which will begin on November 12 outside the city of Zhuhai in the Guangdong province.
This will be the first time that the Sukhoi Su-57 has been presented at the biennial airshow, which has become the People’s Republic of China’s largest international airshow and in recent years has been used to showcase Beijing’s great leap forward in military aviation.
The Su-57, which the Kremlin has touted as the most advanced “fifth-generation stealth fighter” in service today, is scheduled to perform flight demonstrations while a second version will be exhibited as a static display. Moscow has sought to find foreign buyers for the advanced aircraft, as Western sanctions have limited its ability to produce the Su-57 in significant numbers.
Not The Welcome That Was Expected
Instead of being the star of the show, the Russian-made fighter has already received significant criticism and ridicule on Chinese social media platforms. The trade show hasn’t even begun, but photos of the aircraft were widely shared on TikTok—and social media users quickly drew unfavorable comparisons between the Su-57 and the domestically-built Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon, Beijing’s own fifth-generation warbird.
Part of the issue may be due to the fact the Kremlin opted to send a prototype of the Su-57 instead of a production model, but aviation enthusiasts were quick to point out numerous design issues and other perceived flaws. That included the numerous bolts on the fuselage and poorly aligned sections.
“Lots of screws: Closer look at Russia’s 5th generation Su-57 fighter jet at China’s Zhuhai Airshow,” wrote open source military news site Clash Report on X, sharing many of the same complaints as those on TikTok.
There have already been suggestions that Russia failed to keep spectators from getting so close to the aircraft, and then by allowing the videos to circulate on social media. In other words, the Kremlin failed to control the narrative—especially when it could have been proactive by releasing a highly edited “sizzle reel” of the aircraft.
Instead, it opened the door for scrutiny, and the Chinese users on social media have an easy target.
“Chinese social media is very jingoistic,” explained technology industry and social media analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. “China has now developed domestically fighter jets it believes to be better than Russia’s.”
That fact may have already made it challenging for Russia to win over the Chinese or even to find foreign buyers, which was the whole point of sending the fighter to the airshow. It may also offer the world a glimpse of the aircraft’s shortcomings.
“Russian aircraft may be well-designed from a basic aeronautical standpoint, but the manufacturing technology, and the materials technology, is subpar,” explained Dr. Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven.
Chinese Cheerleading
The comments from the users on Chinese social media could serve to counter the long-held myth that Beijing lags behind the West.
“China’s aircraft are rapidly advancing to match U.S. planes, but they suffer a stigma as being worse than they are today because the strategy for rapidly developing Chinese systems was explicitly to steal and borrow tech from other countries even if they couldn’t match the manufacturing technology yet,” added Schmidt.
“So early 2000s aircraft were bad because the manufacturing and materials technology wasn’t there. But China had the money to keep stealing tech and failing upward on manufacturing technology until they essentially reverse-engineered the weapons tech and the manufacturing technology,” Schmidt continued. “Russia didn’t have the money to do that, and now they face sanctions that hold back their manufacturing technology, and finally, Russian military culture is often too proud to accept how far behind they are—which is the first step to catching up.”
