Good point and indeed the new trainer might be the closest analogue to the FTC-2000, however the point is, in China this design is already flying since years, itsef is used by the PLA only as an interim type, for export has gained only really little success since the market for such types is - at least IMO more than overcrowded - and if India can develop it quick enough to still enter the game is yet another question.
IMO - but again why I am? - it is a waste of resources.
All that is just semantics and doesn't change the fact that as of TODAY, the PLAAF has 2 trainers, one is a MiG-21 derivative that it still offers to low cost users and the other is a Chinese Yak-130 variant.
China basically created a LIFT out of a MiG-21UB Mongol trainer baseline. And the other Hongdu L-15 was basically a Yakovlev design in every sense of the word.
They did it for whatever their reasons were and I frankly don't care enough to judge them on that.
But the fact remains that even Boeing, when faced with a situation where they needed to design a LIFT for the USAF Trainer competition, chose to go with a tried and tested design.
The T-7A is essentially based on the F-18 C/D Hornet design, since Boeing had the drawings for it from the time that it bought McDonnell Douglas. Rather than starting completely from scratch, they took what they had, brought in Saab for their skills in MBD and small tactical fighters and came up with the T-7A.
This was Northrop Grumman's N400NT prototype which it wanted to enter into the USAF's Trainer competition. Does it look revolutionary or a 5th gen LIFT? The way I see it, if the HLFT-42 is refined further, with some forward fuselage mods it won't look very different than this N400NT
It has been clarified that HAL came up with the idea of the HLFT-42 due to certain requirements from the USAF trainer contest that would have required more work on the Tejas trainer. They would've wanted to get a design into development that was known to them and hence they went to the HF-24 which was aerodynamically considered to be very good.
As of now, it is still a concept that they're pitching. It hasn't even had an engine finalized, so it is quite preliminary and will take much more refinement going forward as it progresses into preliminary and then detailed design.