BEIJING—Fresh video and still images of China's supposed stealth fighter prototype have emerged online, fueling speculation among military officials and experts about why the secretive military would suddenly allow the curtain to be lifted on such a sensitive project.
Despite China's tight Internet controls, Chinese bloggers have posted dozens of images of the J-20 online in the week leading up to a long-delayed visit by Robert Gates, the U.S. defense secretary, who arrives in Beijing Sunday on a mission to repair military ties.
Several Chinese bloggers have also posted what appear to be firsthand accounts of the J-20 conducting high-speed taxi tests—one of the last stages before a test flight—at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute in western China.
The Chinese government and military have maintained silence on the apparent tests, which suggest that China is making faster-than-expected progress in developing a potential rival to the U.S. F-22—the world's only fully operational stealth fighter.
Yet Chinese bloggers described in detail Friday how Chinese officials had arrived at the airfield in motorcades and private jets to inspect the J-20 and pose for photographs wearing the pilot's helmet and sitting in the cockpit.
Many of the bloggers, some of whom appeared to be at the scene, said they had expected the aircraft to make its first test flight Friday, and were disappointed when the visiting officials dispersed without the J-20 taking off.
China's state media, meanwhile, sent mixed signals by quoting foreign media reports on the aircraft, and reactions to those reports from Chinese defense analysts, without actually confirming or denying that the tests were taking place.
Some experts suggest that this is China's way of responding to U.S. demands for greater transparency about its military build-up—one of the key issues overshadowing Mr. Gates's trip and a state visit to the U.S. by Chinese President Hu Jintao later in January.
Others suggest the images' publication is designed to send a message that China is emerging as a global military power even faster than most U.S. officials and experts have predicted—including Mr. Gates himself, who downplayed China's stealth fighter prospects in 2009.
Another theory is that the images were directed more at a Chinese audience in response to a recent agreement between Russia and India—China's two biggest neighbors and former military adversaries—to jointly develop a stealth fighter.
Most experts agree, however, that it is no accident that the pictures were published just before Mr. Gates arrives in China to meet his counterpart for the first time since military ties were suspended in January last year over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
Chinese authorities routinely delete politically sensitive material from the Internet, and often detain those who post it, but appear to have allowed most of the discussion and images of the J-20 to appear on military and aviation enthusiasts' blogs and websites.
The J-20 was until recently so secret that it did not have an official name and was known as the J-XX among Western defense and intelligence officials and experts.
"If anyone can keep a secret, it's China. This week's J-20-fest wasn't an accident," wrote Greg Waldron, deputy Asia editor of GlobalFlight.com, in his blog on the website of Flight International magazine.
"There are two possible reasons for the easy access the world is getting to the J-20. Either A) the country is trying to be more open, or B) they are trying to send a message," he said.
Gareth Jennings, aviation desk editor at Jane's Defence Weekly, said: "You definitely get the sense that it's being, not exactly stage-managed, but they're clearly not upset about the images being out there."
China does have a track record of gradually declassifying military programs by allowing occasional images to appear online, according to Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"The timing is interesting as India is an obvious peer competitor," he said. "The officially sanctioned leakings may have been intended for a domestic audience to say: 'It's not just the Indians who'll have one of these; we do too.'"
However, he said there may have been a "mischievous element" in allowing the images' release just before Mr. Gates's visit.
Mr. Gates cut funding for the F-22 in 2009, predicting that China would not have any such planes by 2020 and only a handful by 2025.
A few months later, He Weirong, the deputy head of China's air force, announced that China's first stealth fighters were about to undergo test flights and would be deployed in "eight or 10 years."
U.S. defense and intelligence officials now say they expect China to start deploying the aircraft by around 2018.
Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, the U.S. director of naval intelligence, told reporters this week that China was advancing faster than expected in some areas, although he said he could not tell from the J-20 pictures when it would be fully tested and operational.
"They've entered operational capability quicker than we frequently project," he said, according to an account of the briefing on the U.S. Navy's website.
"We've been on the mark on an awful lot of our assessments, but there have been a handful of things we've underestimated."
He said China's military was becoming more open, but not enough to reassure the U.S. about how it plans to use its new capabilities, which include an aircraft carrier and an antiship ballistic missile, both of which are expected to be deployed in the next year or so.
"Over the years, the Chinese military doctrine was 'hide and bide': hide your resources and bide your time," he said. "They now appear to have shifted into an era where they're willing to show their resources and capabilities."
Meanwhile, military aviation experts were scrutinizing the J-20 images to see what, if anything, they could tell about the aircraft's capabilities.
They can tell little about its stealth capability, as that depends not just on its shape, but on the composite materials it is made from, the paint that covers it, and the technology that it carries on board.
However, they are hoping to be able to tell if it is using a Chinese engine, as China has been trying for years to develop its own models to replace the Russian ones that it either imports or produces under license to power almost all its jet fighters.
Some aviation experts said the images suggested that there were either two prototypes undergoing tests, each with a different kind of engine—possibly one Russian and one Chinese — or that two types of engine had been tested in the same prototype.
The J-20 is expected to be China's first "fifth-generation" fighter, meaning it will likely have radar-evading stealth capability, the ability to cruise at supersonic speeds without using fuel-hungry afterburners, and the capacity to take off and land from a short runway.
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