I appreciate your candor, but I think you haven't been doing PLA watching long enough to make these kind of grand conclusions.
So, first of all it should be recognized that H-20 is easily the most important and most secretive Chinese military aviation project that has ever been developed. This exceeds J-20/XX by a significant margin at its peak.
That is to say, for a project like H-20, we do not expect any accurate drawings, depictions, or technical diagrams -- let alone actual real pictures of it -- until it is "unveiled". There are many projects that fall in this category, but the closest to it in terms of importance and trajectory is J-20. Prior to late 2010/early 2011, we didn't have any "solid pictures" or meaningful "academic literature" on J-20 in any meaningful capacity that perfectly resembled the final article.
We had rumours of J-20 in terms of role, configuration, and overall characteristics for multiple years prior to 2010/2011 when it was unveiled -- similar to how we have rumours for H-20 -- however nothing authoritative, and certainly no clear pictures.
Only afterwards did we recognize that we did have one or two non official CGIs that were very close to the real thing, but that was only determined long in retrospect.
Second of all, is the timeline for H-20. The "rumours" for a flying wing stealth bomber for the PLA go back to the early 2000s. That is to say, the requirement for a flying wing stealth bomber for the PLA is likely something that has been longstanding, and certainly has captured the PLA watching community's imagination for a long time as well. However, the "H-20 project" as it stands that we know of today, only really began to roll out rumours after the Y-20's development finished and it entered proper testing. That is to say, the timeline is that the true development of the aircraft itself (in the incarnation that we expect) only began in the early/mid 2010s, partly because that is when XAC had the experience and the resources available to dedicate to it after developing Y-20. So as far as the "duration" of the H-20 "rumour" goes, it actually isn't that long, only about 10 years maximum.
Given how long it takes for a modern bomber to be developed (see the journey of the NGB -> LRS-B -> B-21 and the time that took), the H-20's journey so far is all fairly reasonable.
Third, and as important as the above two factors, is that we have had official AVIC and official PLA media entities and individuals directly make remarks to the H-20, occasionally by referencing a next generation flying wing bomber (on more than one occasion), and once or twice even by name. It is not in the PLA and AVIC's nature to make such relatively blatant (by their standards) references and depictions of this kind of aircraft if they were not actively developing it in pursuit of procuring it.
For the record, I started PLA watching around 2007, and everything I've observed for H-20 so far tracks closely with past experience for other PLA-committed aerospace projects over the years like J-20, Y-20, J-XY/35, J-15/variants, especially when considering what I said in point one -- i.e.: the sheer strategic importance of H-20 and the associated secrecy that encompasses it which outmatches everything else that came before it.
Addendum:
There are a few other things you've written which I want to address:
- there's no expectation that H-20 will have a combat radius of 15,000km. If you mean one way ferry distance, that is also unlikely and is of course not exactly a viable mission profile. Additionally the idea of H-20s conducting China to CONTUS bombing missions is not realistic either, and while it has been discussed in this thread in an academic way, it is just that -- academic. There are far more realistic and valuable ways for H-20 to be utilized.
- no serious PLA watcher believes H-20 will be unmanned. China is developing many flying wing UAVs/UCAVs, and people who don't know any better automatically assume "flying wing" = H-20. That only means those individuals are too fast on the draw and don't properly assess the balance of evidence and likelihood.
- the AVIC video of the flying wing emerged at a time when the H-20's rumours were already well established
- there is a lot of rubbish written by popular defense media on a whole heap of subjects (including H-20) -- however that doesn't mean that H-20 is not an active program of record in late stages of development which we are all expecting to emerge in the near future. The media hoopla is a result of their incompetence. However our (that is to say, competent PLA watchers) expectation of H-20 is very much independent and unrelated to the media incompetence
- H-20's development would have started in the early/mid 2010s properly ($7000+ USD per capita GDP), and the expectation is that H-20 should generally match or even exceed B-2 in most aspects of capability but of course be much more modern and future proof in networking, sensors and EW operations. This should not be a huge controversy given when the J-20/XX development began, China's GPD per capita was even lower. Industrial capability and competence is related to national wealth and wealth on a per capita level to an extent, but it doesn't track cleanly backwards like the way you partially suggest.
