On Dec. 26, 2024, Mao Zedong’s birthday, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unveiled a new stealth aircraft. Reportedly designated J-36, the aircraft combines stealth capabilities with a large payload capacity, enabling both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions over extended ranges at supersonic speeds. These features make it a formidable challenge for modern air defense systems.
China’s sixth-generation fighter jet has sparked renewed concerns about Beijing’s advances in the ongoing arms race. It comes at a time when the United States has scaled back investments in next-generation air dominance under its latest defense budget. For U.S. military planners, this development significantly complicates operational scenarios, particularly in the Taiwan Strait, where China’s enhanced offensive counterair and interdiction capabilities would necessitate a rapid deployment of additional intelligence and defensive assets. Such a capability shift underscores the need for the United States to reassess its air strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
On Dec. 26, 2024, Mao Zedong’s birthday, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unveiled a new stealth aircraft. Reportedly designated J-36, the aircraft combines stealth capabilities with a large payload capacity, enabling both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions over extended ranges at supersonic speeds. These features make it a formidable challenge for modern air defense systems.
China’s sixth-generation fighter jet has sparked renewed concerns about Beijing’s advances in the ongoing arms race. It comes at a time when the United States has scaled back investments in next-generation air dominance under its latest defense budget. For U.S. military planners, this development significantly complicates operational scenarios, particularly in the Taiwan Strait, where China’s enhanced offensive counterair and interdiction capabilities would necessitate a rapid deployment of additional intelligence and defensive assets. Such a capability shift underscores the need for the United States to reassess its air strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
The jet’s unveiling marks a significant milestone in the evolving great-power contest between Washington and Beijing. This new Cold War is increasingly defined by technology competition. The CCP isn’t just seeking to dominate core commercial technologies like electric vehicles and artificial intelligence. It wants a deeper military-civil fusion that supports Beijing’s ability to replicate a Cold War-era offset strategy, in which technological advantages tip the military balance.
There are also reasons to believe China’s new aircraft is meant to be a signal to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his administration to counter the threat of tariffs and to substitute military signaling for economic statecraft. The fact is, Beijing is increasingly out of options to counter renewed U.S. coercive diplomacy. Since the U.S. presidential election last November, China has launched one of the world’s largest amphibious warships, conducted its largest naval operation in decades, and unveiled a new airborne intelligence and command and control platform. As the new Trump foreign-policy team takes office, they should see these measures for what they are: a country bargaining from a position of weakness and likely prone to increased risk-taking and brinkmanship. By integrating military preparedness with economic and diplomatic strategies, the United States can counter China’s technological gambits while reducing the risks of militarized disputes.
Revealing new military capabilities follows a logical pattern in statecraft. As outlined in a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, states often reveal a new weapon of war during peacetime to substitute for more direct military confrontations. By signaling their military power, states bet their rivals will avoid escalation. Revealing new technologies is a form of coercive bargaining between states.
Trump has threatened tariffs and promises to counter China. The J-36 can be seen as a coercive counterweight. After all, threats to sell U.S. treasuries are both hollow and self-defeating, and every time China seeks to manipulate trade and deny the export of critical minerals, it creates market incentives for all states to seek alternative sources.
In this context, a new aircraft is not an act of a superpower but instead indicates a strategic vulnerability. It also opens a window of increased risk for Trump’s team, since China is likely to continue signaling its military strength. This ongoing show of force opens up the possibility of international crises and militarized disputes.
For instance, China can continue large-scale cyber intrusions as seen in recent attacks on U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, the Treasury Department, and key logistics hubs. Or Beijing can show Washington the limits of increased U.S. military pressure through technological signaling. It is timely that the same week the world saw pictures of China’s sixth-generation fighter jets, additional videos emerged online of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) training with first-person view drones, similar to those used extensively in Ukraine.
The risks are manageable. With China’s economy stagnating and its population in decline, the Trump administration needs to avoid pressing leaders in Beijing further into a frame in which risk-acceptant behavior seems rational. Pushing a desperate actor into a corner is a high-risk gamble. That actor will either back down or lash out. Yes, the United States should stand up to China, but it should do so clearly and balanced by multiple levels of crisis diplomacy and engagement.
The opportunity is clear. By revealing a new fighter jet—that still only replicates proven U.S. capability—Chinese President Xi Jinping has shown his hand. Economic threats are more likely to affect decision-making in Beijing than military threats. As the new Trump team takes office, they need a comprehensive China strategy that overcomes bureaucratic divides in the existing U.S. national security enterprise. Rather than directly responding to each military signal, the Trump team should take a more indirect approach, combining economics and law enforcement activities with efforts to help U.S. forces and allied militaries coordinate effectively, as well as establishing a framework for crisis management.
First, the new Trump administration should prioritize developing a comprehensive interagency plan for countering the CCP that treats military power, while critical, as a supporting instrument of power rather than the primary. Drawing on this framework, the administration should introduce new economic and law enforcement instruments that target China’s critical vulnerabilities.
From a military standpoint, force posture and partner integration likely matter more than trying to gain an edge through advanced military technology. The Trump team will need to reassure partners and allies while building deeper interoperability to ensure U.S. forces can fight alongside democratic states in the Indo-Pacific. Strategy should focus on operational logistics, passing intelligence and targeting data between allies, and building up inventories of key munitions like air-to-air and anti-ship missiles. Force posture and partner integration are as important as fielding sophisticated military technology.
Second, the Trump administration must establish a deliberate and structured system for crisis management and diplomatic communication. To reduce the risk of unintended escalation, Washington should prioritize developing robust communication channels with Beijing. Regular military-to-military dialogues and crisis diplomacy mechanisms are essential to preventing misunderstandings and creating opportunities to de-escalate potential flashpoints, such as in the Taiwan Strait. This dual-track approach—balancing deterrence with diplomacy—is critical for responsibly managing great- ower competition as crises between the United States and China become more likely, not less.
Moreover, the Trump administration should incorporate crisis rehearsals into its strategic planning, mirroring the war plans and mission rehearsal exercises used by the military. Such drills would expose vulnerabilities in the national security enterprise’s operational approach and enhance readiness. Combining proactive crisis communication with strategic exercises will be key to weathering the challenges ahead.
Third, the Trump team will need to ensure there are significant denial and defensive measures that support any new counter-China strategy. These measures should raise the costs of China’s brazen use of cyber operations and economic espionage campaigns, as outlined in the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s concept of layered deterrence. They could include hardening targets against advanced campaigns like Salt Typhoon and better intelligence sharing with the private sector to identify future threats.
By recognizing this moment as both a warning and an opportunity, Washington can remain competitive without inadvertently pushing Beijing into a dangerous escalation spiral. This point is especially salient given that PLA planners and ideologues think they can control a crisis. That belief is not backed up by history.
Yasir Atalan, a data fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, contributed to this article.
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