I do not think the J-35 a good example in this case. FC-31 was designed as a 5 gen land-based aircraft for export as we know. SAC took almost a decade to develop J-35 on top of it. There must have been significantly redesigns in the structure in addition to adding the visible features for carrier uses. While we might still call J-35 "a naval variant" of FC-31, its path of development should definitely not be repeated by PLANAF for their 6th gen carrier aircraft.
That's a fair point about the structural redesigns for navalized J-XDS. Just to clarify the timeline though .... the PLA Navy's involvement with a carrier variant was first reported in , with the J-35 prototype flying in . So the actual naval conversion took about 3 years once committed, rather than the full decade from the original FC-31 demonstrator.
But I agree, that development path probably isn't ideal for 6th gen. Starting with carrier operations in mind from day one would be more efficient than adapting a land-based design later. Though considering the J-35 and nuclear CATOBARs are still years away from entering service, there's plenty of time to navalize J-XDS once we see .