If you read that article for 'news' value, you missed the whole point. That article is not a news article. Neither is Mr. Perrett a 'street' reporter. The chart was more in support of his analysis of the build trends he sees. That is pretty clear just from the title of the article "Chinese defense acquisition funding for large, long-range fighters" and the chart itself where the X-axis separates the heavy weight planes from the J-10 (medium weight). It is not meant for the J-10 bean counters out there.
Why is 'breaking' news good? 'Breaking' news is only for those who have not been in the loop. These trend-analysis articles serve as shock absorbers to future 'breaking' news. Examples, long before there was a Hainan and CZ-9, when the Tianjin rocket factory was built, in the first article about the factory, the magazine noted the spacing of the factory was designed for 10m diameter boosters, not 5m. Going back even further maybe 40 years when they first reported that the Soviets were testing three new planes named RAM-J/K/L (Ramenskoye). They weren't breaking news back then but a decade later, RAM-K became known as the Su-27. RAM-L became the MiG-29. I leave RAM-J as a Googling exercise.
To the bean counters out there, the point of my previous post is to gloss over/ignore the exact numbers and try to read between the lines and glimpse at a possible future which is much more exciting. My tea leaves say Mr. Perrett is suggesting that a new medium weight fighter is not in PLAAF's future plan. PLAAF's next 'new' fighter is more likely to be a large and heavy-weight 6G with a defined strike role (bigger belly unlike the J-20). To get there (2035), there maybe one or two more major iterations of the J-20 (S/WS-15) and one more major iteration of the J-10 (D) but the J-XY has no good fit in this timeline as it lacks very long range, too technologically similar to the J-20/F-35, cost much more than the J-10, and probably inferior to the next generation Japanese/Indian fighters. These are my conclusions drawn from the patterns Mr. Perrett outlined in his article.
A good analyst sees 'patterns' and makes prognosis. 15 years is not a long time in the aviation world. Whatever we will see by 2035 is already in R&D today as the inertia gets harder and harder to sway. If a heavy weight 6G turned out to be the next PLAAF fighter or 'breaking news' pictures of a J-10D appear, then I'll know where I first read about the speculations and their motivations. Mr. Perrett will probably be retired by then and uninvolved but in March of 2022, he gave cogent reasons why a J-10D should (not must) logically exist.
If the J-XY is 'ever' adopted by PLAAF then my interpretation of this article is off. That is not a bad thing at all as I think the J-XY is a very pretty looking plane. It is a win-win situation to me regardless since I am not paying for them.
