Generics Gotcha: Intransitive Inheritance from self-referential types

The setup

I was used to the assumption that type inheritance in Java is transitive, that is B extends A and C extends B implies that C is a subtype of A as well as of B. As long as A,B and C denote straight classes, this is true to the best of my knowledge. But as I, admittedly only recently, learned, once generic type expressions come into play it gets a bit more interesting:
Let's make A a self-referential generic type like

interface A<T extends A<T>>{T x();}

The problem

Suppose, we'd now want to introduce some parallel class hierarchy depending on our A,B,C hierarchy, like this

interface D<T extends A<T>> ...
class E implements D<B> ...
class F implements D<C> ... 

. Now, the compiler complains about the definition of class F, claiming that C is not a valid substitute for the parameter T extends A<T> of type D. Now, this seems funny: Type B is allowed while type C which is derived from B is not allowed in the very same type expression with the same upper bound A. After some thinking, this makes actually sense. What's the purpose of having a self-referential type like A? Probably, to have some method or attribute which is defined using the type of intended subtypes (as "x" shown above). Now, for the first sub-type, B, the type parameter T would be bound to B itself and in x's implementation the return-type would naturally be B. The same would, of course, hold for any sub-type of B, i.e. also for C. That, in turn, means that C is not a legal direct implementation of A! C is not self-referential any more, because its inherited member x still returns a B.

A resolution

Once the real cause of the problem is clear, the solution is easy: The definition of D needs to be changed to allow A's type parameter to refer to an arbitrary super type of D's parameter

interface D<T extends A<? super T>>

Now, E and F compiles just fine as defined before.