The essence of dog fighting is to manuever into firing position before the enemy do the same. J36 is fighting on a different level from current ones.
If you can't detect a J36 from a distance then you can't manuever into firing position, and your sensors may be fried by the powerful ECM from J36 making you blind. So J36 has the advantage of shooting you down without hard manuevering, and from a safe distance from you.
Many people said J36 is not a fighter, I think they are right. It is a combat dominance aircraft, it does not need to fight like a fighter to kill you.
You are mostly right with one correction, it's not the essence of just dogfighting to get into best firing position. This remains true for BVR as well.
J-36 is just hyper BVR focused. To a degree where it surely is making sacrifices in agility. Let's assume its ITR, STR and roll rates are worse than 4th and 5th gen fighters but better than B-21 and existing CCAs around the world. It can still climb fast and obviously has a high top speed. Therefore getting to right positions is still within its "agility" kinematic performance.
To compensate for it's comparative lacking of agility compared to 4th and 5th gen manned fighters, the J-36 likely has much more enhanced all aspect stealth, sensor, networking, EW, weapons payload, speed, and superior range capabilities. All of these advantages over typical 5th gen for less agility (but superior speed and possibly also altitude). Meanwhile SAC's 6th gen looks like it focuses on the turning part.
To add to this, China will also have over 1000 5th gen fighters by the time these enter service at the current production rate of J-20 of >120/year and already having around 300 units of just J-20. J-35 and J-35A entering service now too with production rates that will eventually match if not exceed (simpler and smaller aircraft) current J-20's rate. Both of these fighters turn more or less with the best 4th and 5th gen dogfighters... rest is training, networks and weapons dependent.
We haven't even talked about CCAs which of course further ensure that actual dogfighting will become rare to non-existent in most air war engagements.
J-36 absolutely is the king of beasts as an aircraft "fighter" that obviously emphasises BVR. As part of the PLAAF network of shooter platforms, this is the high level BVR piece, the rooks or even queen for chess reference. There are plenty of pieces in PLAAF that are going to cover anything that approaches WVR. This J-36 stays far away from that sort of fight. Before it was "let your missiles do the turning"... the F-35 was ahead of the curve in stating that but everyone knew and clearly many acted on this too. Now it's let your long range missiles do the killing and your 4th and 5th gen fighters can do plenty of turning if your CCAs aren't already covering most of those needs.
Stealthier with no vertical or horizontal stabilisers. Would be as stealthy as a flying wing except can supercruise and I bet it turns better than a B-2/B-21.
More weapons.
Longer ranged weapons with larger and deeper IWBs.
Higher operating altitude based on CAC.
Faster top speed and supercruise - assumed based on sweep angles and essentially CAC own revelations on performance emphasis.
Third high thrust engine for powering EW suite and sensors on top of tapping into more thrust for speed.
Longer loiter time and range because its volumous design takes more fuel (although third engine means consumption up by 50% too!). This means it needs to receive VCE which is also something CAC hinted at. Prototypes may be flying WS-10C rather than VCE or even WS-15 despite WS-15 now on J-20 birds. Choice for this could simply be because the prototype was designed and developed many years ago, before WS-15 readiness and initial production.
While they were designing this prototype back in maybe say 2017, they wouldn't have final WS-15 weight, dimensions, thrust specs etc all detailed with any certainty. WS-10C is also a variant of an engine that has been used by PLAAF for over 10 years at this point, therefore it is much more known.
