We should have, but back then the Chinese had better relations to the Israelis. My point was only, that it would have been better for us to invest in a single engine, medium class fighter, with a delta canard design, compared to the light class delta wing fighter and that we could have shortened the development time by common engines with MKI.
So is it based on the Lavi or not? Wikipedia says Israeli's sold Lavi technology to the Chinese.