Nothing to do with China.
The F-22 is expensive to operate and with production capped we never reached the economies of scale to continue operating the F-22 as originally intended.
Be that as it may, of course China is a factor behind this.
Lets examine some facts:
1) Starting with the initial move of Obama's "Pivot to Asia" in the early 2010's serving as a overall chronological framework for the following points.
2) The emphasis by the US in terms of the Indo-Pacific strategy and the Quad concept.
3) The US military leadership making statements signally a shift in threat perception from non state actors to focus on other nation states i.e Russia and China. ex. Mattis's 2018 comments regarding National Defence Strategy marking a return to the tri-polar world.
4) The "cat of of the bag" phenomenon under Trump where he didn't really mince words when it came to China. This is significant as now the general American public was made aware of the things that were happening shaping the public perception of things to come.
5) Shifting from a strategic basis to more tactical ones. The increasing emphasis by the US military on fighting in the Pacific.
6) In terms of the USAF, I'm referring to PACAF ACE and the shift to the mobile fight utilizing islands in the Pacific.
7) In the previous framework, of course the US needs to organize itself and analyze what it needs to shift to carry out these new strategies and tactics.
8) Thus, we come to this point, the secret emergence of a six-generation fighter which in all likelihood attempts to rectify the shortcomings of current US hardware in regards to the new reality of a near peer China.
9) Remember when the J-20 was only the J-XX in USNI sketches, in the mid to late 90's, the US did NOT expect it to fly and materialize as it did.
10) The F-22 only came into service in 2005 and was built for a different fight, i.e. USSR/Russia and over Europe.
11) The requirements changed and thus we have what is referenced in the original article for this thread.
Including the "early" retirement of the F-22 while keeping new build Eagle II and late block F-16s in service.
12) So, yea I would say China had something to do with it.
en.wikipedia.org
I'll take a Job at LM and push for F-35's for PAF 
