And remember,
this will be a two way stream of learning. PAF will verify this jet against Western fighters and Chinese will like to receive the real life data as well for future block improvements.
thanks for mentioning Thai Gripens, so the secrecy Cat is already out of the bag and here is PDF lynch mob after my blood for committing the PAF blasphemy by suggesting that it should request some material favors from Americans, if at all they "beg" us to Bring J-10 in future exercises.
recall the story about SU-35 sale to China, the Russians were worried that Chinese will copy and reverse engineer that flankers like before but then decided to go ahead with a limited sale thinking that its better to make some money out of it as Chinese will eventually catch up through "other means" and copy whatever ground breaking improvements that latest iteration of Russian flanker carried. the result is that allegedly Chinese flanker is the most potent and better than its original Russian example.
Relevance? well.. in a parallel universe just before Americans gather some vital information about J-10 (as if they dont already have) PAF just makes a deal and gets something in return and share the results with China as well.
the premise of my hypothesis is that China is not insecure and values PAF judgement. any F-16s acquired will only result in more opportunities to serve tea to shot down IAF pilots.