For most of my career, first as an analyst in Australia's intelligence community and then in the world of think tanks, I have watched and written about the modernisation of China's military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA). On every step of that journey, China has offered surprises. In fact, my experience in both the intelligence community (which, it should be emphasised, is now 17 years past) and open-source PLA analysis is that the pace of change and scale of ambition are generally underestimated.
But even by that standard, 2025 has been a year of major revelations. In fact, I cannot recall a more dramatic year in my time as a PLA watcher.
If we cheat slightly by starting our survey in the final days of December 2024 rather than on 1 January 2025, then we can include the first photographic evidence that China has not one but two "sixth generation" fighter programs underway. These aircraft promise to outperform fifth generation fighters like the American F-35, the leading Western design now being procured by the United States, Australia and other Western partners. As 2025 progressed, higher quality images of the prototypes emerged, including this one of a tailless stealth fighter unofficially designated as the J-50.
My quick analysis of the Shenyang J-50/J-XD/J-XDS prototype, based on the new photo which has surfaced today.
I tried to highlight only the notable features. The labels are based off of my own best guess.
Photo is not my own, credit to the original photographer pic.twitter.com/iM9eurzrlr— Dylan Nguyen (@DylanA_Nguyen) September 25, 2025
But there's so much more to highlight: the commissioning of China's third aircraft carrier, the apparently excellent performance of Chinese weapons in Pakistan's aerial skirmish with India over Kashmir, evidence that China is building a military headquarters outside Beijing roughly ten times the size of the Pentagon, countless new combat drone designs, the "invasion barges" for a Taiwan amphibious landing, the Beijing military parade, the launch of a new amphibious vessel for which there is no global equivalent, strong photographic indications of a fourth aircraft carrier under construction (nuclear-powered and perhaps the largest warship ever built), and just yesterday, the first images of a new class of military transport aircraft. This list is not exhaustive.
Yes, there are still big gaps in Chinese capabilities (anti-submarine warfare, for instance) and areas of technology where they are behind the West and Russia (nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft engines, to name two). But as I noted in a piece for Foreign Policy after the Beijing military parade, China is no longer an imitator or "fast follower" in military technology. It is a leader.
