IMHO, in regard to cheetah original post, I believe that China is capable of producing fighter that would nominally mach F-22 technology level within 8-12 years, but only nominally. The real capabilities wouldn't match F-22 by far, just as I believe with all due respect that J-10 is only nominally F-16 class fighter but with real operational capabilities not matching already proven and battle hardened F-16. To be honest, I don't believe that anybody in the world is capable of doing it today. Even US lack political will (based on security, budgetary and public opinion reasons, as already observed by latenlazy) to go through such development. F-22 is remnant of cold-war era and what was then threat of mass clash of highly sophisticated systems, while F-35 is response to changes that occurred after the 1990.
China made significant progress on many industrial and technology fields including different aspects of military aircraft industry, however they still lack experience in design, production and especially of real combat use of such sophisticated systems. What is also surprising to me is that China does very little on the commercial aircraft field too. Although the China made progress based on the bought Russian technology in 90-ties, one should also understand that you may buy many components, you may buy some of the knowhow, but experience must be built patiently over the time (including the combat engagement). Also it has to be said that producing F-22 class fighter requires advance on the system level and not component level. It is not just about engine or AESA, it is about what you achieve with them.
F-22 excelled on the field of low observability achieved by reducing its overall signature. This includes reducing its RCS using technology that is less maintenance intensive than technology used on the F-117, reducing its IR, visual and audio signature and also reducing its electronic activity signature (what is the purpose of reducing RCS if your radar screams I'm here, I'm here). This requires lot of work on design on one side, and very high production standards on the other. Also one thing is to use such aircraft in peace time and completely another is to achieve such operational capabilities in the real combat (well F-22 isn't battle proven either, but US has still collected a lot of actual operational experience with different systems in the last 20-30 years, including LO aircrafts like F-117 and B-2).
Pilot awareness on F-22 is boosted by data links that integrates and presents information on operational level, rather than presenting only tactical situation like on the 4th gen fighters. Furthermore, F-22 itself can serve as mini-AWACS, SIGINT or communication transfer platform for other less capable aircrafts. But to use this feature in the actual combat requires building highly complex (not to mention global) C4I system, using AWACS, SIGINT, ECM and other platforms, communication satellites and of course making all of it combat operational (battle proven). Also reducing the signature as stated above requires collecting information as much as possible in passive mode rather than actively searching for targets like on previous gen fighters. Building AESA radar is one matter, making its signature effectively small when needed is another matter.
Defensive systems like ECM are always matter of wider infrastructure and specialized aircrafts like US Raven, Prowler or Growler platforms, however F-22 has unusually sophisticated threat detection and identification system that would combined with its reduced signature allow it to operate much closer to battlefield with much lower operational risk. On that field China still has a lot of things to be desired.
Offensive systems were not designed specifically for F-22, but they are also combat proven systems in the post cold war era.
Boundaries of overall maneuverability and flight envelope were moved by combining improved engines (thrust vectoring, improved fuel efficiency and TBO, reduction in number of overall parts) with digital flight control systems (based on their experience with improving the agility of aircrafts like F-16 and F/A-18, but also based on experience of controlling the flying bricks like F-117) and what is said to be extremely departure resistant aerodynamics. F-22 is capable of super-cruise (not the first and not the only one though) combined with agility far beyond of previous gen fighters like F-15 or F-16. China never obtained even thrust-vectoring technology (unlike Su-30MKI, their Su-30MKK doesn't have such engines), while J-10 or JF-17 as far as more advanced they are from their previous designs like J-7 or J-8, never achieved anything similar. China is still on the level of early F-16 and F/A-18 designs from 30 years ago, but as already said experience is something you patiently build over the time one step at the time.
And in the regard of China becoming super power, well it is for certainly on the path to achieve that, but many challenges lays ahead of China that needs to be answered before they confirm such status. Being super-power is much more than producing sophisticated weapon systems. The Soviet Union collapsed while trying to match Western technology for 45 years, primarily based on pure social reasons. They were launched as super-power on the basis of their role in WWII, but they did not respond in creating satisfied society before they tackled global domination. US on the other hand became world largest economy around 1880, they had immense industrial power during first half of 20th century, but they became unprecedented global power only in WWII, some six decades later, assuming after the war leading global political and military role.
To establish them as a super-power China will have to make continuous progress on many different fields, and eventually in the second half of 21st century they might become one. J-XX is one of the steps on that path, but expecting that it will match F-22 around 2020 is just not possible.
