China confirms stealth fighter test flight (VIDEO)

Chinese President Hu Jintao confirmed Tuesday that China had carried out its first test flight of a stealth fighter jet, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

Gates said Hu told him the maiden flight of the J-20 fighter jet prototype, which could eventually help narrow the military gap with the United States, was not timed to coincide with his visit.

"I asked President Hu about it directly, and he said that the test had absolutely nothing to do with my visit and had been a pre-planned test," Gates told reporters, according to Reuters.

Photographs of the jet's test flight, in the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu, were widely circulated on Chinese internet blogs and online news sites.

Despite U.S. fears to the contrary, China insisted Monday that its military technology lags "decades behind" the United States and that of other developed countries, and that it poses no threat to the rest of the world.

However, China is in the middle of a swift expansion and modernization of its military, much of it to improve air, sea and space capabilities. Chinese military officials say their buildup is defensive, but analysts interviewed by The New York Times said the military’s expansion is part of a long-range strategy to transform the armed forces from a domestic power to a force with global reach comparable to that of the United States.

The J-20 would pose the greatest immediate threat to Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as Chinese territory. Taiwan's air force is composed mostly of aging U.S. F-16s and French Mirage jets, and its electronic warning systems would find it difficult to cope with stealth technology.

The twin-engined, chisel-nosed J-20 mixes Russian engine technology with a fuselage design similar to that of the U.S. air force's F-22 "stealth" fighter, which can avoid detection by radar. The photographs also appear to feature a "carrier-killer" missile, an adaptation of an intermediate-range ballistic missile — the DF-21D — capable of significant damage to aircraft carriers, as the name suggests.

The test flight came on the second day of a visit to China by Gates to discuss defense ties, and the normally secretive military made no attempt to hide it or remove photos and reports about the J-20 from the internet.

According to the Associated Press, the timing is intended to send the message that Beijing is responding to calls from the United States and others to be more transparent about its defense modernization and future intentions.

However, another analysts said the test flight appeared to be an act of defiance by the People’s Liberation Army. “This is what you call political warfare,” a diplomat in Beijing told the Financial Times.

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