Russian fifth-generation Su-57 fighter mocked on Chinese social media

The Russian Aerospace Force’s most advanced fighter jet, the Sukhoi Su-57 (NATO’s familiar name Felon) arrived in China on Monday ahead of the upcoming 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which will begin on November 12 outside the Zhuhai city in Guangdong province.

This will be the first time the Sukhoi Su-57 will be on display at the biennial air show, which has become the People’s Republic of China’s largest international air show and in recent years has been used to showcase Beijing’s leap forward in military aviation .

The Su-57, which the Kremlin has touted as the most advanced “fifth-generation stealth fighter” in service today, is scheduled to perform flight demonstrations while a second version will be on display as a static display. Moscow has struggled to find foreign buyers for the advanced jets as Western sanctions have limited its ability to produce the Su-57 in significant numbers.

Not the welcome expected

Rather than being the star of the show, the Russian-built fighter has already received considerable criticism and derision on Chinese social media platforms. The trade show hasn’t even begun, but photos of the aircraft were widely shared on TikTok—and social media users were quick to draw unfavorable comparisons between the Su-57 and the homegrown Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon, the fifth generation of the same of Peking Warbird.

Part of the issue may be that the Kremlin chose to send a prototype of the Su-57 instead of a production model, but aviation enthusiasts were quick to point out several design issues and other flaws. This included the numerous bolts in the fuselage and the misaligned sections.

“A lot of screws: A closer look at the Russian Su-57 5th generation fighter jet at China’s Zhuhai Airshow,” the open-source military news site Clash Report wrote on X, sharing many of the same complaints as those on TikTok.

There have already been indications that Russia failed to prevent onlookers from getting so close to the aircraft and then allowed the videos to circulate on social media. In other words, the Kremlin failed to control the narrative—especially when it could have been proactive by releasing a highly edited “scroll” of the aircraft.

Instead, it opened the door to scrutiny, and Chinese social media users are an easy target.

“Chinese social media is very jingoistic,” explained tech industry and social media analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. “China has now developed indigenous fighter jets that it believes are better than Russia’s.”

That fact might already have made it a challenge for Russia to win over the Chinese or even find foreign buyers, which was the whole point of sending the fighter to the air show. It can also give the world a taste of the aircraft’s weaknesses.

“Russian aircraft may be well-designed from a basic aeronautical standpoint, but the manufacturing technology and material technology is inferior,” explained Dr. Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven.

Chinese cheerleader

User comments on Chinese social media could serve to counter the long-standing myth that Beijing lags behind the West.

“Chinese aircraft are advancing rapidly to match American planes, but they are stigmatized as worse than they are today because the strategy for the rapidly developing Chinese systems has been explicitly to steal and borrow technology from other countries, even if they couldn’t match the manufacturing technology yet,” added Schmidt.

“So in the early 2000s aircraft were bad because the manufacturing and materials technology wasn’t there. But China had the money to keep stealing technology and failing upward in manufacturing technology until it actually reformed the technology weapons and manufacturing technology,” Schmidt continued. . “Russia didn’t have the money to do that, and now they face sanctions that hinder their manufacturing technology, and finally, Russian military culture is often too proud to admit how far behind they are—which is the first step to catch up the difference.”