Between them, Washington and Moscow account for more than half of the world’s $410 billion in arms sales, but opportunities abound for China as the United States looks to cut its military spending to manage its mounting debt.

Still, U.S. spending dwarfs that of China. In its annual report on the Chinese military, the Pentagon in May estimated Beijing’s total 2012 spending would be between $120 billion and $180 billion. Washington will spend $614 billion on its military this year.

Most of Beijing’s trade is done with small states outside of the European Union, which like the United States, put China under an arms embargo after the crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Myanmar are among China’s biggest clients, with aircraft at the top of their shopping lists, SIPRI data shows.

Beijing does not release official figures for arms sales. Foreign estimates put the figure at about $2 billion in 2011.

STAR OF SHOW: STEALTH FIGHTER

The undisputed star of the show this week was a sleek, quarter-sized model of China’s second stealth fighter, dubbed the J-31 by most Western analysts.

Although officially a concept plane, it bore what industry bible Aviation Week called a “striking resemblance” to a mystery jet that flew briefly at the end of October.

Photographs of the jet leaked, or orchestrated to look like a leak, and emerged on the Internet days before this week’s Communist Party Congress and leadership handover, and confirmed China’s place in a select club of stealth-capable nations.