Rumour is the PLANAF is more interested in a carrier capable J20, which isn't all that unreasonable since its smaller that the Su27/J15.
Having a common airframe between the air force and navy would also lend itself to all sorts of benefits in terms of economies of scale, commonality of training and spares availability etc.
In a way, rather than follow the American example and ditch the amazing F22 and buy into the indisputably less capable F35, for around the same cost if not more per plane as the F22, better to just make the J20 into the all services 5th gen from the get go.
That does, unfortunately leave the J31 out in the cold, but if the F22/F35 saga is anything to go by, its probably the smart move.
China isn't going all stealth, and the likes of the J10B and subsequent versions should be more than enough to meet China's "lo" tier fighter needs, especially when they will be able to call upon J20 support for anything they cannot deal with themselves.
Ultimately, if the J20 vs J31 performance to cost ratios follows a similar trend as that of the F22 vs F35, it would be better to get, say 500 J20s, with the balance of the air force made up of 1000+ J10B, J16s etc, rather than have a force of 100 odd J20s and a thousand J31s in my book.
That way, you got enough to your top dog fighters to go around that they are never spread too thinly, and are pretty much always available to support your legacy birds, and your legacy birds can make up the numbers to perform all the grunt work after your stealths have finished all the hard, first day of war missions.
If you really want to cover your bases, you could also invest some of the savings from not buying 1000+ expensive J31s and invest that in a dedicated stealth bomber/striker, that will be better at taking out the nasty ground targets than the J20 or the J31.
I have always held the view that all this multi-role leaning is a bad idea waiting to bite someone on the backside. It is a compromise to appease the bean counters and dilutes the real key capability of fighters (to kill enemy fighters and secure mastery of the skies) so everything can be seen as playing an active role in the kinds of soft wars the west has gotten used to fighting against hopelessly outclass foes.
It could prove to be a massive false economy if those multirole birds find themselves faced off against an enemy with equivalent technology and training, but who's machines and pilots have specialised mainly or even solely on air combat.
All other things being equal, a fighter that has made zero compromises from being the very best air superiority fighter that could be designed is going to had a decisive edge against one that was designed with other considerations in mind, and so had to make allowances and compromises to suit (F22 vs F35).
Similarly, of two pilots of the same skill and who spends the same number of hours training, the one who spends 100% of his time training for air combat is going to be better at it than his twin who also spent significant portions of his time training for ground attack, anti-shipping etc.
