[The Epoch Times, March 29, 2023](Epoch Times reporters Song Tang and Yi Ru interviewed and reported) A few days ago, the CCP launched the C919, the first large passenger aircraft developed in accordance with international airworthiness standards. However, like chips with advanced manufacturing processes, China’s aviation technology, especially engines, is completely dependent on Western companies, giving the United States a trump card in its competition with the Chinese Communist Party’s aviation industry.
According to the analysis, if the CCP provides lethal weapons to Russia, one of the possible options for the United States and the EU to sanction the CCP is to cut off the supply of aviation technology and stop China’s commercial aircraft project, thereby attacking Beijing’s economic, technological and transportation vision.
It will be a long and unpredictable process for the CCP to independently develop its own commercial aviation technology. Even if it succeeds, it may only be outdated Western technology. Experts said that it may have to wait until the CCP regime collapses and becomes civilized, and then reopens and cooperates before China catches up.
Is it misleading for China’s commercial aviation to completely rely on foreign technology for C919 domestic production?
China’s aviation technology originated from the former Soviet Union. Since the 1980s, with the thawing of US-China relations, Chinese airlines have increasingly purchased Western commercial aircraft, and the technical gap of China’s local Soviet-style aircraft was suddenly exposed.
Tang Xiaoping, the former general manager of AVIC Commercial Aircraft Company, told the mainland media a few years ago, “The most painful thing for me is the distrust of the capabilities of Chinese aircraft manufacturers from domestic airlines and even the international market.”
Take the domestically produced Y-10 aircraft that first flew in 1980 as an example. After completing the test flight, it quietly withdrew from the stage of history four years later. It is much cheaper, safer and more profitable to buy Western jets than domestic ones.
Initially, the Chinese authorities also tried to cooperate with foreign manufacturers to master the key technologies of the aircraft. But in the 1990s, the huge technological gap caused China’s aircraft manufacturers to give up the technological path of self-reliance, and the discontinuation of the aircraft project plunged state-owned manufacturers into an existential crisis. It is an option to design aircraft according to the concept of modern commercial aircraft, and to choose the mature supply chain of foreign system suppliers.
MA60 aircraft (MA60) is China’s first domestic regional aircraft manufactured through international cooperation. It has selected mature products from foreign system suppliers: PW127C engine from Pratt & Whitney of Canada, avionics system from Collins Corporation of the United States, Honeywell’s navigation system and Hamilton’s 247F-C four-blade propeller, etc.
After that, ARJ21 regional jet airliner and C919 continued this commercialization path, and the supply chain was mainly mature products of American companies.
In a late 2020 report, Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote that calling the C919 a Chinese aircraft is misleading because nearly all of its components, including the All parts are imported. American companies account for almost three-fifths of the main suppliers of the C919, with another third coming from Europe, according to Airframer. Only 14 major suppliers are from China, seven of which are Sino-foreign joint ventures.
These Chinese suppliers mainly provide fuselages and wings with relatively simple technology, accounting for only 25% of the entire aircraft cost.
Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group and aviation analyst, told VOA, “China simply can’t do it without Western engines and avionics systems. The real challenge is not to build aircraft, The real challenge is the engines and avionics, the brawn and the brains of the plane. Building an aluminum tube with a flag painted on the tail doesn’t really make sense.
Despite the use of foreign supply chains, the quality and safety of domestically produced aircraft cannot be reassured. Nearly half of the MA60 aircraft have been grounded due to accidents in many countries. Safety problems include failure of landing equipment, failure of braking and steering systems, etc. The New Zealand government even warned the public not to take the MA60 aircraft.
The ARJ21 regional jet is overweight and uses obsolete technology of the previous generation. Similarly, the MA700 and C919 single-aisle jetliners are just copies of Western products that have been flying for decades.
Lu Yanliang, director of the Department of Flight and Civil Aviation Personnel Technology at Chaoyang University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times, “If it is a commercial activity, it is a form of competition. There will still be so-called key technologies among major manufacturers, and they will retain them. It’s not regarding complete release.”
“Forbes” reported last year that foreign suppliers are reluctant to provide the most advanced components because they are worried that the CCP will steal their technology. The C919 uses past technology, and the engine may be an old version upgrade. One third less. Moreover, it consumes more fuel, and there is no overseas sales and service network, so it cannot be self-sufficient in key components.
People in the industry believe that domestic customers may not really trust the capabilities of Chinese aircraft manufacturers and the quality of domestic aircraft. Although they are full of expectations for domestic aircraft, they rely on foreign aircraft.
A researcher from an international aviation consulting company, who did not want to be named, believes: “I am not optimistic regarding the commercial prospects of domestic large civil aircraft, because airlines will obviously purchase Boeing and Airbus products that are technically very mature.”
Feng Chongyi, a professor at Sydney University of Technology in Australia, told The Epoch Times that the CCP has built a new airliner and spent a lot of money, but the airliner is life-threatening and requires 100% insurance, including Chinese domestic airlines, (probably) will not buy this aircraft.
China’s first domestically-made large passenger aircraft C919, so far, only China Eastern Airlines dared to take over. Chinese-funded airline “Greater Bay Airlines” (Greater Bay Airlines) announced in early March this year that it has ordered 15 Boeing 737MAX series 737-9 airliners and plans to purchase 5 787 Dreamliners. The C919 is not on the list.
Su Ziyun, director of the Institute of Strategy and Resources of the National Defense Security Research Institute of Taiwan, told The Epoch Times, “Civil aviation companies will pay great attention to safety issues. Therefore, even if the Chinese Communist Party really launches domestic engines in the next five or ten years, it will take another 10 years to accumulate , can gain the trust of the market, so it is estimated that the CCP still has more than 15 years to seize the aircraft market.”
The West has the ability to cut off the supply to China’s aviation industry but has not done so
The CCP authorities have always regarded the development of the aerospace industry as a strategic goal. Among the ten key areas of the “Made in China 2025” plan, one of the goals is that by 2025, China’s global market share of general aircraft will reach 40%. In the 2015 CCP government work report, for the first time, “aero engines and gas turbines” were included in China’s (CCP) national strategic emerging industries.
Over the past two to three decades, the CCP has used its market appeal to build the aviation industry through technical cooperation with the West. An obvious example of “exchanging technology for the market” is that Airbus spent 25 years selling 500 aircraft in the Chinese market before the Airbus Tianjin final assembly line was completed. However, since the opening of the Tianjin assembly plant in 2009, Airbus sold 500 aircraft in China in just five years.
At the same time, the CCP also uses the Chinese market as a bargaining chip in US-China geopolitics. At the end of the last century, China needed the United States to extend the most-favored-nation status and apply for accession to the WTO, and purchased a large number of American Boeing aircraft. However, when the United States and China faced off in the Taiwan Strait in 1996, in April of that year, China signed an agreement to purchase 30 A320s and abandoned Boeing.
Since the U.S.-China trade war in 2017, Boeing has lost almost all orders from China. After the Boeing 737MAX8 crashed in March 2019, the Civil Aviation Administration of China immediately issued a grounding order for the 737MAX8. By July 2022, China’s three major airlines announced that they would purchase 292 Airbus A320NEO series aircraft from Airbus, without Boeing’s share.
Since China’s aerospace industry is basically dominated by the Chinese military, the Chinese Communist Party has also transferred the innovative ideas, quality control and advanced technology learned from commercial cooperation to the manufacture of military products. The current “military-civilian integration” strategy advocated by Xi Jinping continues to operate.
Western countries have the bargaining chip to hinder the development of China’s aviation industry, but the West has not done so yet. Su Ziyun said that the United States has a peaceful Chinese dream for China. The National Security Strategy Report issued by the Clinton Administration in 1997 stated that it would help China develop its economy and bring it into the WTO. It is hoped that Beijing can abide by some international rules. idealization. After Trump came up in 2017, he believed that the CCP might not evolve peacefully, so he established a new grand strategy and started a trade war and technology containment.
In early 2020, the Trump administration considered halting the issuance of licenses to export LEAP-1C jet engines to China due to concerns that China might “reverse engineer” the engines to obtain engine manufacturing technology. But then the Trump administration extended the export license until 2025.
After the U.S. added COMAC to its export-restricted “Entity List” in January 2021, it removed it in June of the same year, despite the blacklisting of COMAC’s parent company for its ties to the military. There has never been a crackdown on the C919 commercial aircraft business.
Analysts believe that if the United States really imposes sanctions, China is likely to order more aircraft with Airbus. At the same time, the quality of the C919 does not pose a serious commercial threat to the Boeing 737 or the Airbus A320.
The Financial Times last year, citing industry sources, said the 168-seat C919 was not as competitive because it was not as fuel-efficient as planes from Boeing and Airbus and would struggle to lure international buyers away from the two aircraft-making giants. attract.
Forbes reported last year that observers also doubted the reliability of many of the orders and COMAC’s ability to ramp up production quickly.
But the United States and other Western countries will leave hidden dangers in doing so, that is, following the CCP has mastered the manufacturing technology, it will replace the original suppliers without hesitation. William Reinsch, director of international business studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, told VOA, “I think they (the CCP) ultimately want to kick both Airbus and Boeing out of the Chinese market. There is no doubt regarding this. China’s goal is to eliminate these two competitors (in China) and then go to a third country to compete with them in the market. When they are able to do so, the Chinese government will Start telling their airlines to buy Chinese planes, not Boeing, not Airbus.”
Legal structure in place for US-China jetliner decoupling
At present, the Russo-Ukrainian War has entered its second year, and business practices that seemed unaffected by geopolitics in the past are changing. The United States and Europe have drawn a red line to the CCP. If the CCP supplies Russia with lethal weapons, it will face consequences.
Archyde.com exclusively reported earlier this month that the U.S. was working with close allies to explore the possibility of new sanctions on China if Beijing provided military support to Russia, but the talks were still in the preliminary stages.
Su Ziyun said that if the CCP provides Russia with lethal weapons, it means that the CCP really wants to influence the course of the Russia-Ukraine war. Now there is evidence that Norinco exported rifles to Russia, claiming that they were used for hunting, but this may be enough to deceive children. As more evidence emerges, Western countries dominated by the United States will further block all scientific and technological cooperation of the CCP. path of.
The European website Politico reported on March 16 that according to data provided by ImportGenius, a customs data aggregation agency, China North Industries Group Co., Ltd., one of China’s largest state-owned defense contractors, reported to a company called Tekhkrim in June 2022. Russian companies sent rifles. The Russian company does business with the Russian government and military.
Su Ziyun commented that decoupling should be imminent, and if it does, the entire aviation development plan of the CCP will come to a standstill. Military ones are barely usable, but the cost is so high that commercial aviation cannot afford them. Xi Jinping appointed a new Minister of Defense, and let the military industry system take the lead. This is an important indicator. He wanted to make this C919 in the first place.
An article in Foreign Policy this month said the legal structure for jetliner decoupling was in place and that COMAC’s main parent companies were on the US military end user (MEU) list.
A precedent is that in September 2021, Canada and the United States rejected the export license of the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW150 engine used by China’s MA700 passenger plane, and the MA700 passenger plane was killed during the development process.
The article said that although the CCP hopes to develop local products to replace these imported components, this will be a very long road, and self-sufficient development of jet aircraft is definitely not a good idea. Even the U.S. jet industry has long formed alliances with industrial partners in Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and others.
Aircraft engines are the weakest link in China’s civil aviation, and only three companies in the United States and the United Kingdom (General Electric and Hewlett-Packard in the United States and Rolls-Royce in the United Kingdom) manufacture commercial jet engines. France’s Safran also played a role as GE’s partner, and there was no other option.
Russia is unlikely to be China’s jet engine supplier of choice. The Soviet Union once had a second-rate commercial engine industry, but efforts to revive it have been uncertain and very slow. Today, Russia is still completely dependent on Western aircraft and engines, and can only keep existing aircraft flying by illegally circumventing sanctions.
Due to the limited number of jet engine suppliers, the ARJ21 regional jet and C919 of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) have adopted GE or GE/Safran engines imported from the United States. For ARJ21 aircraft, GE’s CF34 engine has no alternative option.
For the C919 aircraft, China is developing its CJ-1000A engine, but it may not be operational until 2030, and the CJ-1000A also relies heavily on imported Western key technology.
The article said that the West can indeed use this trump card to bring China’s commercial aircraft project to a standstill, thereby attacking Beijing’s economic, technological and transportation vision.
While losing this key growth market would be bad news for the entire global aviation industry, it would also seriously damage the Chinese economy. An unreliable air transport system affected by sanctions means that China, like Russia, might end up, like Iran, relying on an aging fleet of existing jets with very uncertain levels of sustainability and safety.
Lu Yanliang said, “If there is this sanction, C919 still has an alternative to the Yangtze River engine (CJ-1000A). The difference is whether the entire progress of its entire production line will be affected by the schedule. This is Observable.”
“If the domestic engine is developed by itself, it is actually a matter of time. The main thing is that it will involve the engine developed today, and how stable it is.” Lu Yanliang said.
Feng Chongyi said, “If decoupling, it means that China (the CCP) is locked in a technological trap. It has to wait until the CCP regime collapses and becomes civilized, and then reopens and new cooperation. Catch up.”
Responsible editor: Lin Yan#
