Podcast: Story in the Story (10/25/2019 Fri.)
People's Daily app
1571936541000

SITS LOGO.png

8

From the People's Daily App.

This is Story in the Story.

The J-20 is China's fourth-generation medium- and long-range fighter aircraft, and it was commissioned into the Air Force combat service in 2018.

The J-20 signals that China's Air Force has dramatically increased its ability to deal with new security threats in airspace and made steady progress in the aero equipment system.

China’s Air Force will further increase real combat training on the sea and enhance the real combat capability especially under long-distance and high-sea conditions.

The new stealth jet will also enable the Air Force to improve its ability to tackle conventional threats and enhance combat capacity.

The J-20 made its maiden flight in 2011 and was first shown to the public at the 11th Airshow China in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, on November 2016.

"The J-20 will also change the history of the air force in the Asia-Pacific region. In the past, only the US and its allies like Japan were capable of arming stealth fighter jets. But now, their monopoly in this region has been broken by China's J-20," said military expert and commentator Song Zong.

Today’s Story in the Story looks at the people behind China’s J-20 stealth fighter, one of the most advanced military aircraft in the world.

1.jpg

China's J-20 stealth fighter (Photo: VCG)

For most Chinese, skipping high school and going straight to college, especially after passing China's competitive college entrance examination, is a farfetched thought.

So when Yang Wei, chief designer of China's J-20 stealth fighter, spoke of how he skipped high school and was admitted into a prestigious Chinese university after passing the national exam with ease almost 40 years ago, the video clip immediately went viral on China's Twitter-like platform, Sina Weibo, with netizens marveling at his early academic achievement.

At age 15, Yang became the youngest student majoring in aerodynamics at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

He said he applied for an opportunity to take the national college entrance examination, and it was approved.

"So just two weeks after I took the high-school entrance examination, I took the college entrance examination," Yang said.

It was 1978, the competition was so fierce that over 6.1 million people vied for 400,000 seats in college that year, with an admission rate of less than 7 percent.

Yang aced in the exam. He said his final score was only one or two points below the score requirement of China's top universities like Peking and Tsinghua. Even though many universities expressed interest in the young man, Yang said his color vision deficiency barred him from being admitted to the schools he applied for.

It was the Northwestern Polytechnical University, a university famous for its aerospace technology, that finally admitted him.

"I had already studied for a month in high school, and I happily bid farewell to my classmates. I told them, 'Goodbye. I'm going to college,'" he said.

2.jpg

Yang Wei, chief designer of China's J-20 stealth fighter, accepts interviews during the "two sessions" - the annual meetings of the national legislature and the top political advisory body, on March 20. (Photo: VCG)

Yang's years at the Northwestern Polytechnical University sparked his interest in aircraft design. Before graduation, Yang chose to work in the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute. "I told my advisor that I want to be a chief aircraft designer in the future. He didn't comment, only saying that this will require a lot of effort and opportunities," Yang said.

For the next 30 years, he participated in and led the design of a series of Chinese fighter jets including the J-10 and FC-1, and is now the chief designer of the J-20, China's most advanced stealth fighter jet and the latest addition to the arsenal of the People's Liberation Army Air Force.

At 37, Yang became the youngest chief aircraft designer in China. "I finally realized the dream I had when I was a college student," he said.

Yang later became the general designer of the FC-1 Xiaolong, a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by Pakistan and China and was also appointed the chief designer of the J-20.

It only took seven years from the J-20's first test flight in 2011 to being formally armed by the PLA. "The J-20's performance is beyond my expectation. As a new aircraft, it was able to be mastered by so many pilots in such a short time, this is really outstanding compared with previous planes," Yang said.

"As a chief designer, I truly feel that fighter jets have life, there's a spirit in them. They're the brainchild of aircraft designers who devote their time to research and innovation, based on their understanding of future warfare," he said.

(Produced by Nancy Yan Xu, Lance Crayon, Brian Lowe and Paris Yelu Xu. Music by bensound.com. Text from China Daily and Global Times.)