How Chinese Flankers and J 10's are inferior ... Just because you are exported cheap quality goods by the Chinese ( all depending upon the purchasing power ),
No, but because the techs, weapons and capabilities they procured are of lower standard than ours (MKK vs MKI), or because J10A is currently not capable enough to compete with MKIs either, let alone Rafale F3+ and if J10B will needs to be seen.
It's funny anyway that whenever there is a discussion about Indian MMRCA, Pakistani or Chinese members bring up J20 and not J10, J11 or Su 30MKKs, because the inferiority in a 1 on 1 comparision is obvious, while ignoring that FGFA will be the counterpart to J20, be it technilogically or even more important, regarding the timeframe of induction.
Answer a simple question , you have producing aircrafts in JV's for decades , why is LCA so late then ?
... Weren't you able to master anything ?
Simple answer, because they didn't used the advantages of JVs and tried to do it alone at LCA, that's the only problem and a major mistake!
Now compare it with the Chinese ... The level of their aerospace engineering !
Reverse Engineering > Innovation > Creation
When you look at it in a general way, when you look at it a bit deeper you'll see, that they are also much dependent on foreign input (no matter how they get it)! Mainly on Russia, but also on Europe (just look at the helicopters which are mainly licence productions) and also look at the same problems they have with indigenous engine developments that we have. They are undeniably in front of us, but that's not surprising by the fact that they nearly started a decade earlier and invest way more in this field. On the other side they are still not at a level as Russia, Europe and by far not as the US.
China does not reverse engineer because they want it, but because they have to, since their access to JV or the defence market in general is very limited. If they had the same options as India, they would have prefered teaming up with foreign partners as well, because that gets you a better way to more advanced techs and capabilities, than reverse engineer old techs and then have to improve them on your own. So reverse engineer is not an advantage of China but a necessity!
With the continuous crashing I don't think IAF will ever be back to full strength.
First of all, apart from the Mig crashes, no other fighter has a crash problem and the crashrates are not that worse like in other air force (US lost an F15, an F16 and an F18 just in the last 2 weeks). On the other side, you have to keep in mind, that the numbers are falling currently, but the capability is rising at the same time, because the fighters that will be phased out are older single role fighters (Mig 21, 23, 27), while more modern fighters will be upgraded to multi role capability and all new additions like MKI, LCA, Rafale are already fully multi role capable. It might take time till the squadron numbers will be the same again, but capabilitywise IAF is not by far weaker at all!
Claimed 5th Gen ? 
Even US is concerned about it ... 
