People's Liberation Army Air Force

The People's Liberation Army Air Force is the primary aerial warfare service of China's People's Liberation Army and controls most of its aircraft, ground-based air defence and the Airborne Corps. Its roots lie in a small aviation unit set up by the Chinese Communist Party in 1924 with Soviet training, and it was formally established on 11 November 1949 after the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. It first fought in the Korean War, flying mainly the Soviet MiG-15, and was later reshaped by the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution and reforms in the 1980s. Since the 2000s it has adopted the Sukhoi Su-27 and the domestic Chengdu J-10, and it fielded the Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter from 2017.