From: Toronto Sun

By Daniel Proussalidis ,Parliamentary Bureau

OTTAWA  – While Canada struggles with the decision on whether to join the big boys by buying the F-35 for the air force, the Chinese are developing a second stealth fighter jet.

China’s J-31 took its maiden test flight on Wednesday, which concerns aerospace expert Richard Aboulafia.

“The technological military aircraft race may have taken a break after the Cold War, but it has resumed,” Aboulafia, vice-president of analysis at the Teal Group Corp., said.

Aboulafia said the J-31 looks “a lot more like the real deal” to him than the J-20 – a much larger Chinese stealth jet that’s further along in development.

Still, China has trouble producing its own top-notch engines, electronic warfare systems and radar to put in its fighter jets.

That makes it tough for the communist dictatorship to develop a true fifth-generation fighter jet on par with what the F-35 is supposed to be, but Aboulafia insists the J-31 is significant.

“Even if this isn’t the ultimate state of what the Chinese can achieve it’s still a definite wake-up call that they’re on that path,” he said.

The J-31 also bears a remarkable similarity to the American-designed F-35 that several NATO countries, Japan and Israel plan to buy.

Aboulafia warns that “raises the question of was there really some kind of cyber-theft” by China of F-35 technology.

What’s more, he said Chinese efforts to develop stealth fighter jets should weigh heavily on countries with Pacific coasts, such as Canada.

The analyst said this latest news could push South Korean to choose the F-35 when it decides on its future air force needs in early 2013.