From the AP/Guardian:  An official Chinese newspaper has dismissed a report that the country used technology taken from a downed US aeroplane in its own stealth fighter programme. …

China says the plane is based entirely on indigenous designs, and the Global Times today quoted an unidentified defence ministry official as dismissing an Associated Press report citing Balkan military officials and other experts claiming that China likely gleaned some know-how from an American F-117 Nighthawk shot down over Serbia in 1999.

"It’s not the first time foreign media has smeared newly unveiled Chinese military technologies. It’s meaningless to respond to such speculations," the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper, which is published by the ruling Communist party’s flagship People’s Daily. …

However, most of the wreckage was simply carted off by anyone who desired a piece, according to Belgrade’s Blic newspaper.

"It was not just the Chinese who got parts of the aeroplane. Anyone who wanted them took them. The Russians ended up with an entire wing," Blic quoted Milovan Azdejkovic, who in 1999 was a department head at the Military Technical Institute in Belgrade, as saying. …

The Chinese newspaper denial comes a day after a US federal judge sentenced an engineer of an earlier generation of stealth aircraft, the B-2 bomber, to 32 years in prison for selling military secrets to China.  (photo: Reuters)

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