However, I think we should go over the credibility of the individual again. I had briefly talked about it here:
The person worth paying attention to isn’t the channel owner, but 约克, who made the claim.
约克 works within China’s MIC and has access to some inside information. However, there’s a fundamental difference between the two podcasts. Guancha is a news outlet, and the guys are professional reporters. In contrast, the other podcast is more of a personal show with some enthusiasts. It’s more like friends chatting about military stuff over a beer after work. Naturally, the standards and credibility between the two are very different.
I think he certainly does have info, but we should be cautious when evaluating what he says. We don’t know how many hands the info has passed through, or the specific context under which those statements were made from his sources .
Moreover, recently he's made a lot more of the specific remarks that we look for:
- China’s aircraft carriers have already been planned up to the sixth ship
- GJ-11 exported to the UAE
- The “Water Molecule” designation is gone now
- J-16 is no longer in production, only J-16Ds
- He was also the one who claimed that the yearly production of Y-20 is now ~50 (I vaguely remember him saying something like this, but I can't find the exact quote)
I don’t think his credibility (more so because he hasn't been as proven as the others) is strong enough to fully support all these claims yet. Still, they’re worth keeping an eye on. Rather than taking everything wholly, we should treat them as shifts in our expectations. For example, instead of assuming J-16 production has ended, the rate might be even lower than we expected. The J-10CE sales might not be in the three digits but higher than we previously thought. And even if only of these rumours is confirmed, the information still has value, particularly if it carriers greater weight like a GJ-11 UAE export.
