Late last year China sent Western defense analysts all atwitter when it released photographs of their supposed new stealth fighter, given the designation J-20. Pundits spent much time and effort theorizing what all this meant, especially since the leak was timed to coincide with US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visit to China. Another worrying sign was that when Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Washington DC on January 18th, he was understandably quizzed by US President Barack Obama about the subject, but the Chinese delegation seemed to be genuinely unaware of the J-20, leading some to speculate that China’s civilian and military leadership were at odds with each other.

This week another new development took place, one that suggests that the threat of the J-20 is less than what it appears. China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, ran footage of what was lauded as a live-fire exercise by the J-10 fighter. The J-10 appeared to fire an air-to-air missile that hit and destroyed another aircraft. However, attentive bloggers analyzed the video frame by frame and noticed that the video seemed identical with scenes from the 1986 film, Top Gun. As the Yahoo article points out, Chinese media has been known to do this sort of thing before, and it could be just another example of journalists being lazy and sloppy. But it could also be a sign that China’s military, egged by a newly confident and assertive public, is tooting its own horn.

Personally, I’ve noted that growing assertiveness with unease. It’s hard not to notice China unilaterally claiming that most of the South China Sea belongs to it. Equally worrying is how aggressively China has been behaving with regards to border disputes with the Japanese. This has understandably pushed many Asian countries much closer to the US, even while they are eager to do with business with China. Vietnam is one prominent example of this. Despite both countries being communist in name, Vietnam knows China well enough to fear it as they still have unresolved border disputes and the two countries fought a brief but bloody war in 1979. So it isn’t surprising that Vietnam is one of the most active of the Southeast Asian countries calling for ASEAN to work together to what amounts to deterring China from being overly aggressive.

Still, while China’s rise as a superpower is inevitable and growing military clout naturally goes with it, I wouldn’t bet against America for a long while yet. Not only does America still have the best military toys, what is even more important is that America’s military has vast experience with real fighting in a wide variety of theatres all over the world. This has allowed it to build a deep and highly expert officer corps that no other country can match. By contrast, China’s military has been used mostly for internal security, putting down riots and the like. Another factor that makes America’s military machine so effective is that the brass is more than comfortable with giving officers on the ground plenty of freedom to make decisions on their own. I can’t see China’s leadership allowing their commanders much initiative.