I think China's AWACS and AEW fields are adequte.
Maybe not EW and SIGNT and ELINT though.
As for the Il-76MFs will be able to haul large objects (lengthened by 6.6m) up to 50 tonnes.
That's very good.
But 43 of them is still really a small number. Good progress, but not enough.
Just counting C-5s alone US has 55 of those.
And 50 tons is good, but China can always get a K-ton hauler like the An-124.
As for C-130, The Y-8F600s are way good enough..........
They just need more.......
China do lack BADLY in A2G arnaments though......
China REALLY need to get a larger range of weapons both in terms of quality and quantity.
As for getting the Backfires. Even the old planes are good enough. You just need a lot of spares.
We don't really need to mind about stealth.
The Tu-26/22M has a huge nose housing a good radar.
Even if it was Russian, it was good enough to detect far away like a AEW, so stealth doesn't really matter.
I hope China can develop a goodazz radar for the Tu-22M though. Doing so allows it to buy the plane without an useless radar(Unless only codes matter, then you can trasfer the codes?) get it to use Chinese weapons, and act as a AEW for its escorts!!!
And for god's sake, don't be pointing fingers.