China has apparently begun mass production of its new J-20 stealth fighter, making it only the second country in the world to produce radar-evading warplanes on a large scale.

But as with all military developments in China, it's hard to separate fact from Communist Party-sponsored fiction—and equally difficult to predict just how heavily even large numbers of working J-20s could weigh on the military balance of power in the Pacific region.

The Chinese air force debuted the first prototype of the bulky, twin-engine, twin-tail J-20 in December 2010 at an airfield in southeast China belonging to the Chengdu Aerospace Corporation, a state-owned airplane-maker.