China showed its Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter in public for the first time on Tuesday, November 1, opening the country's biggest meeting of aircraft makers and buyers with a show of its military clout, Reuters reports.

Airshow China, in the southern city of Zhuhai, offers Beijing an opportunity to demonstrate its ambitions in civil aerospace and to underline its defense ambitions. China is set to overtake the U.S. as the world's top aviation market in the next decade.

Two J-20 jets, Zhuhai's headline act, swept over dignitaries and hundreds of spectators and industry executives gathered at the show's opening ceremony in a flypast that barely exceeded a minute, generating a deafening roar that was met with gasps and applause and set off car alarms in a parking lot at the site.

Experts say China has been refining designs for the J-20, first glimpsed by planespotters in 2010, in the hope of narrowing a military technology gap with the United States. President Xi Jinping has pushed to toughen the armed forces as China takes a more assertive stance in Asia, particularly in the South China and East China seas.

"It is clearly a big step forward in Chinese combat capability," said Bradley Perrett of Aviation Week, a veteran China watcher.

It was China's second successive display of a new stealth jet at the biennial Zhuhai show, following the 2014 debut of the J-31.