I dunno siege. I mean it's not secret or anything. Why would he pretend not to know on something like that? At best he would look ignorant and uninformed. At worst people are going to assume the military is doing things behind his back which is a very very bad thing.
I don't doubt for a millisecond that Hu knew all about it. Why? Let's assume the worst case scenario when Hu was totally not informed of the project. The internet pictures of this plane have been around for weeks on end. It would be impossible for Hu's own people not to notice. Let's face it, every boss has his own cronies, let alone a boss with Hu stature. His agents would definitely notice these photos, especially because of the importance of the project. Hu would be informed immediately IF he had no knowledge of it beforehand.
It would be impossible to keep Hu in the dark especially when he is the Chair of the CMC. Because of the rigid political structure of the Chinese govn't, no project at this magnitude can begin without the blessings of Hu. Additionally, General He last year publically annouced the existence of the stealth fighter program. It made a huge noise everywhere. Even assuming IF Hu had no knowledge of it before that, he would surely want to get to the bottom of this when General He publically talked about it.
Also, people saw all these head honchoes at the test flight since last week. No Chinese official would dare to publically embrace something like this without the knoweldge of the big boss. And all these high level military officials leaving their posts and go to Chengdu? Historically, Chinese govn'ts have been suspicious of their military commanders' movements. Even in ancient times, Chinese emperors had all these rules about when, where and how military official leave their posts. And Now, all these generals as well as civilian leaders gather in one place without the blessings of the big boss? What are you guys trying to do? PLanning a political/military coupe? Such thing would be IMPOSSIBLE. Not even 0.0001% of probability. absolutely ZERO!
Hu must have known about it. I think there have been conflicting news about this. As I posted earlier about a USA Today piece, it clearly says Hu confirmed the test flight with Gates. And when Gates asked if the test flight was planned around his visit, Hu told him the test flight had been planned for a long time and just happened to be at the same time of Gates' visit. Although I don't believe that the test flight had nothing to do with Gates' visit, what this piece clearly shows is that Hu knew about it and actually had explained to Gates about the planned test flight.
And now people are saying Chinese officials acted shocked. This is in direct contrast of what the USA Today claimed.
