The Best Chinese Fighter Jets in Service in 2026, Ranked

The best Chinese fighter jet in service today is the Chengdu J-20, a twin-engine stealth fighter that China now operates in larger numbers than any fifth-generation aircraft outside the United States. It is the only Chinese fighter that combines low observability, long-range missiles, and a fleet big enough to matter.

The more interesting answer is second place. The Shenyang J-16 is not stealthy and gets almost no attention, but with roughly 450 built it is the aircraft the People’s Liberation Army Air Force would actually send in bulk.

This list ranks Chinese-designed, Chinese-built fighters in PLA service as of September 2026. The Russian-built Su-27, Su-30 and Su-35 that also fly in Chinese markings get their own section further down, because they are Chinese-operated rather than Chinese.

1. Chengdu J-20 “Mighty Dragon”

The Chengdu J-20 first flew in 2011 and entered PLAAF service in 2017. It is a large, long-ranged stealth fighter built around internal weapons bays and the PL-15 long-range air-to-air missile, and it is the reason China sits in a group of three countries that have fielded a fifth-generation fighter.

Fleet estimates vary more than for any other aircraft on this list. Analysts identified the 300th airframe in the fall of 2025, and by mid-2026 researcher Andreas Rupprecht assessed that roughly 500 had been delivered, with production running near 120 aircraft a year.

Two newer variants appeared publicly at the Beijing parade on September 3, 2025. The J-20A is an upgraded single-seater flying on the domestic WS-15 engine, and the J-20S is a two-seat version, the only twin-seat fifth-generation fighter any country has put in the air.

That second seat is the part worth pausing on. It points at controlling uncrewed aircraft from the cockpit, which is the same problem the United States is trying to solve with its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program and its own sixth-generation fighter jets.

2. Shenyang J-16

The Shenyang J-16 is the most important Chinese fighter almost nobody names. It is a twin-seat, twin-engine 4.5-generation strike fighter derived from the Su-27 airframe by way of the J-11, with an active electronically scanned array radar and Chinese WS-10 engines.

It entered service around 2015 and roughly 470 to 500 had been produced by 2026. That makes it one of the largest modern combat aircraft fleets anywhere, and it carries the weapons that worry Western planners most: the PL-15 and the very long-range PL-17.

There is also a dedicated electronic attack version, the J-16D, which first flew in December 2015. It trades the cannon and some sensors for internal jamming equipment and external pods, giving China a rough equivalent of the US Navy’s EA-18G Growler.

Stealth gets the headlines, but a fleet of nearly 500 sensor-rich, long-range shooters is the harder problem to solve. This is the aircraft that would do most of the work.

3. Shenyang J-35A and J-35

The Shenyang J-35 is the production aircraft that grew out of the FC-31 demonstrator, a company-funded design first shown at Zhuhai in 2014. It is smaller than the J-20 and fills a different slot, closer to what the F-35 does for the United States.

There are two versions. The carrier-capable J-35 first flew on October 29, 2021 and has folding wings, a catapult launch bar, a tailhook and twin nose wheels. The land-based J-35A first flew on September 26, 2023 and skips all of that.

The J-35A made its public debut at the Zhuhai airshow in November 2024, and on September 3, 2025 Chinese state media confirmed both versions as part of the PLAAF and PLA Navy fleets. Around 57 had been built by October 2025.

That made China the second country ever to operate two fifth-generation fighter types at once. The J-35 also conducted electromagnetic catapult launches and recoveries from the carrier Fujian in September 2025, which is the capability that changes what a Chinese carrier group can do.

4. Chengdu J-10C

The Chengdu J-10 is the single-engine lightweight fighter that proved China could design a modern combat aircraft from scratch. It first flew on March 23, 1998, was declared operational in 2004, and more than 600 have been built across all variants.

The current J-10C first flew in December 2013 and entered combat service in April 2018. It carries an indigenous AESA radar, the WS-10B engine in place of the Russian AL-31FN, and the PL-10 and PL-15 missiles.

It is also the only Chinese-built fighter to have been used in combat. Pakistan took delivery of its first six J-10CE export jets in March 2022 and flew them against the Indian Air Force on May 7, 2025.

What happened that night still matters for how the rest of this list should be read. It is the only real-world data point anyone has on modern Chinese fighters and Chinese missiles against a Western frontline aircraft.

5. Shenyang J-11B and J-11BG

The Shenyang J-11 began as licensed Su-27SK production. China signed a $1.2 billion agreement with Rosoboronexport in 1996 to assemble 200 aircraft from Russian kits, and roughly 105 early J-11 and J-11A airframes were built that way.

Then China built the J-11B with its own radar, avionics and eventually its own WS-10A engines, which is generally understood to have broken the terms of that agreement. Russia objected. Production continued anyway, and about 440 to 450 airframes exist today.

The fleet is being modernized rather than replaced. The J-11BG upgrade, recognizable by its light grey radome, fits an AESA radar and current missiles to an airframe that first entered service in 2007.

A more ambitious J-11D with a new airframe and fly-by-wire system got three prototypes between 2015 and 2016 before the program was abandoned. The J-16 absorbed that effort, which is why the J-11 line stops here.

6. Shenyang J-15 “Flying Shark”

The Shenyang J-15 is China’s carrier fighter, and its origin story is unusual. China bought unfinished Su-33 prototypes from Ukraine between 2001 and 2004 and worked backwards from them, then rebuilt the design with Chinese systems and composites.

It entered service in December 2013 and flies from all three Chinese carriers. Fleet counts differ: the IISS tabulation lists about 70 aircraft, while other 2026 assessments put total production above 116 across the variants.

The variants are where the aircraft got serious. The J-15T adds catapult capability and updated avionics and entered service in October 2024, and the twin-seat J-15D is an electronic warfare aircraft that reached service around the same time.

Those two exist because of one ship. The carrier Fujian, commissioned at Sanya on November 5, 2025, uses electromagnetic catapults rather than a ski jump, which lets a J-15T launch with a full fuel and weapons load instead of a compromised one.

7. Xi’an JH-7A

The Xi’an JH-7 is a twin-seat fighter-bomber rather than a fighter in the air-combat sense, and it is on this list because roughly 200 remain on strength. Its job is anti-ship and ground attack with standoff missiles.

Older airframes are being phased out as J-16s arrive. It is a useful marker of how fast the fleet has turned over: a type that was a mainstay fifteen years ago is now the second-oldest thing still flying combat missions.

8. Shenyang J-8F and J-8H

The Shenyang J-8 is the last of the old guard. It is a large, fast, single-purpose interceptor designed in the 1960s, updated through the J-8II in the 1980s and the J-8F and J-8H more recently.

Around 40 remain, listed as phasing out. Ten years ago several hundred were in service, so this entry is really a countdown rather than a ranking.

The Russian-built fighters still flying in Chinese markings

Plenty of lists of Chinese fighter jets include Sukhois, and they are genuinely part of the PLA fleet. They are not Chinese aircraft, so they sit here rather than in the ranking.

The Sukhoi Su-35S is the newest of them, with 24 delivered. The Su-30MKK and Su-30MK2 make up about 97 aircraft, and roughly 32 two-seat Su-27UBKs survive as trainers and are being run down.

The direction of travel is the point. China has not ordered a new Russian fighter type since the Su-35 contract, and the J-16 now outnumbers every Russian-built fighter in Chinese service several times over.

What comes next: the J-36 and the J-50

On December 26, 2024, China flew two large tailless combat aircraft in daylight on the same day, in full view of phone cameras. Neither has an officially confirmed designation, but they are widely known as the Chengdu J-36 and the Shenyang J-50.

The J-36 is the strange one. It is big, tailless, has a delta-diamond wing and appears to use three engines, a layout no operational fighter has used in decades.

The J-50 is smaller and twin-engined. At least three or four prototypes of the two designs have been photographed since, with a third J-36 airframe seen flying on December 25, 2025 showing visible changes from the first.

Neither is anywhere near service. The Pentagon expects Chinese sixth-generation fighters to enter service around 2035, so these belong on a watch list and not on a ranking of what China flies today.

What this list leaves out, and why

Three aircraft appear on most “Chinese fighter jets” lists and should not. Each one is a good test of whether a list has been updated in the last few years.

The Chengdu J-7, China’s MiG-21 derivative, is the big one. Withdrawal began in 2018 and the PLAAF retired the fleet in 2023, though about 200 two-seat JJ-7 trainers remain and some retired airframes have been discussed as target drones and decoys.

The Nanchang J-12 is the second. It was a 1970s lightweight fighter experiment, only a handful were built, and it never entered squadron service, so it is an aviation museum story rather than a fighter in the PLA inventory.

The third is the FC-31 itself, still listed by some sites as a future project. It is not a future project anymore; it became the J-35 and J-35A, and both are in service.

Are Chinese fighter jets as good as American ones?

Not yet, on the Pentagon’s own reading, which judges the PLA air force very good and improving quickly but not a match for the US Air Force in air combat capability. The gap is narrowest in hardware and widest in the things that are hard to see.

On aircraft alone the comparison is closer than it was. China fields two fifth-generation types to America’s two, its long-range missiles are taken seriously, and the J-20 fleet is now larger than the 184-aircraft F-22 force it was built to counter.

Where the United States still leads is combat experience, aerial refueling capacity, aircrew flying hours and maintenance depth. Those decide sortie rates, and sortie rates decide campaigns. We go through this in detail in our US vs China fighter jets comparison, and head to head in F-35 vs J-20.

For the wider picture, our rankings of the best fighter jets in the world, the best American fighter jets and the best stealth aircraft put these aircraft against the rest of the field.