
China's First Jet to Rival Boeing and Airbus Is Helped by U.S. Technology - wslh
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-04/china-s-first-jet-to-rival-boeing-is-helped-by-u-s-technology
======
brianbreslin
This will be interesting to see if western airlines or middle eastern airlines
buy any of these planes. My guess is they will probably rely on the chinese
central banks to give cushy loans to developing nations to build out their air
fleets and to chinese airlines as well to build up enough demand to sustain.
China could go the route of helping regional airlines in Africa for instance
get the planes they otherwise couldn't afford (with chinese construction firms
getting the contracts to rebuild the local airports, and other
infrastructure).

~~~
nullnilvoid
China is by far the largest aviation market in the world. They don't need
other markets to succeed. If they can replace Boeing and Airbus with their
home-made airplanes, that is a huge success. According to research, China
needs more than $1 trillion worth of airplanes in the coming decade. That is
HUGE.

~~~
pinaceae
Expect the Chinese state to create a _very_ friendly environment for those
domestic planes.

Did it in other markets, currently under way against the iPhone.

Airbus and Boeing are toast in China.

~~~
intellegacy
They did it against Google, Facebook, and Youtube as well.

~~~
visakanv
As a 3rd party observer with no stake in either the US or China, I wonder how
the USA would react if China was the #1 in the world economically, and
exporting Facebook, Boeing, etc. I imagine we'd see some American
protectionism.

~~~
Animats
China is #1 in the world economically, and exports Baidu [1], WeChat [2], etc.
Baidu has had a Silicon Valley presence for years, and Tencent, WeChat's
parent, opened one last week.

WeChat could be a real threat to Google and Facebook. It's comprehensive; you
can do messaging, banking, shopping, and taxi calling from inside WeChat. It
has sub-applications for other services. It's a post-desktop world. Google and
Facebook came from desktops and crammed down to phones; WeChat was born
mobile.

[1] [http://www.baidu.com/](http://www.baidu.com/) [2]
[http://www.wechat.com/en/](http://www.wechat.com/en/)

~~~
pdelbarba
I think it's possible that the culture barrier during the initial days of
social networks might have been the cause here. Cultures/aesthetics/languages
are different and so platforms that serve as "one size fits all" (not
localizing their layout and options) might not be able to compete with more
local options at this scale.

------
theandrewbailey
Although the article mentions that many parts were bought under contracts from
foreign companies (making "US technology" appear in the title), I wonder how
many domestic parts were built using stolen trade secrets and intellectual
property.

~~~
Jtsummers
Maybe some. But if China wants to fly their aircraft in Europe or the US they
need to get it past the FAA and European equivalent. The main benefit of all
those US-based components, with regard to this, is that those components are
largely COTS or COTS+barely bespoke and are already certified or in a state
where the changes can be quickly certified.

Novel aircraft systems require a lot of effort to get approval from the FAA to
fly. There's little benefit here unless you're also stealing/faking that
paperwork.

~~~
pdelbarba
And to add to this, if a jet crashes and it's discovered that the equipment is
forged (as it may likely be examined by the documented OEM resulting in some
WTFs flying around in a lab somewhere) the FAA will ground the entire fleet.
They would then have to re-equip the aircraft with certified electronics and
possibly re-certify everything. I'd be willing to bet that in that situation,
any aircraft that was owned locally would either be sold back to china/someone
else who wouldn't care or scrapped costing everyone a metric shit ton of money

------
pdelbarba
It'll be interesting to see if they can get their first generation of
airliners off the ground and operating profitably quickly enough to embrace
the coming wave of next generation composite aircraft. The C919 looks to be
almost entirely traditional aluminum construction but the future of transport
aircraft is looking to be increasingly based on carbon composites. The problem
is that the industrial processes and supply chains for aluminum vs composite
aircraft are _extremely_ dissimilar. China however may have an edge here in
the future as composites are still very labor intensive to construct.

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tuna-piano
What's the difference between Boeing, Airbus, or Comac?

Boeing and Airbus:

-Are owned by shareholders all over the world(including China!)[1]

-Assemble planes all over the world(including China!)[2][3]

-Have employees all over the world (including China!)[4]

-Use parts made all over the world (including China!) [5][6]

Moreover, trade is always equal[7]. If the US sends China $100 of corn and
China sends back $100 of plane, who cares?

\------

[1][http://www.cfr.org/united-states/quarterly-update-foreign-
ow...](http://www.cfr.org/united-states/quarterly-update-foreign-ownership-us-
assets/p25685)

[2][https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-identifies-site-for-
chin...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-identifies-site-for-china-
plant-1477687939)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-china-
factory-a320-201...](http://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-china-
factory-a320-2015-8/#the-planes-117-foot-wingspan-takes-of-up-most-of-the-
space-5)

[4][https://jobs.boeing.com/location/china-
jobs/185/1814991/2](https://jobs.boeing.com/location/china-jobs/185/1814991/2)

[5][http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2005-06-02-Boeing-787-Highlights...](http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2005-06-02-Boeing-787-Highlights-600-Million-
in-Contracts-with-Chinese-Suppliers)

[6][http://www.businessinsider.com/graphic-
boeing-787-dreamliner...](http://www.businessinsider.com/graphic-
boeing-787-dreamliner-suppliers-2013-1)

[7]You may have heard of a "trade deficit". Well, is China sending the US $100
in products and not ask for anything in return? If so, that would obviously be
amazing for the US and foolish for China (free stuff!). The truth is that
instead of purchasing $100 in products to send back to China, China instead
decides to purchase $100 of investment stuff in the USA, and will take the
future returns that investment provides them. An example: China sends $100 of
plane, takes that $100 and builds a $100 apartment building in the USA. It
then takes $5 of profits a year back to China in corn, and then sells the
building in 30 years for (now a larger amount) of $200 in corn.

~~~
dis-sys
1\. US government is preventing Chinese acquisition of both US and foreign
companies. [1] 2\. Boeing's assembly line in China is Boeing's only oversea
factory. All planes assembled in China are for the Chinese market. [2] 3\. US
laws forbid the State Department issuing me US visas with valid period longer
than 12 months because I did high performance computing during PhD (studying
parallel computing is not a crime!). Last time when I worked for a major US
company, I had to spend months to get clearance to have access to some stupid
patent data which is 200% intended for immediate public use. 4\. US bans a
long list of parts/components to be sold to Chinese/Chinese companies. For
example, some public Chinese universities (e.g. BUAA) which have project
fundings from the Chinese government are not even allowed to buy DELL desktop
computers! US bans AMD from selling its high end GPU to the Chinese
government, even when AMD's high end GPU is help designed in Shanghai by a
large team of Chinese engineers [3][4].

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-02/obama-
sai...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-02/obama-said-poised-
to-block-chinese-takeover-of-germany-s-aixtron) [2]
[http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/logistics/boeing...](http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/logistics/boeing-
to-set-up-first-overseas-factory-in-china/article9582090.ece) [3]
[https://www.pcgamesn.com/AMD-Vega-design-
complete](https://www.pcgamesn.com/AMD-Vega-design-complete) [4]
[http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-
chip...](http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/)

------
vultour
I wonder when we will move away from the current plane designs, they all look
the same for decades now! I think a change like the one in automotive industry
in the last century would be welcome. I'd personally love to see some more
'edgy' shapes with less curves (ala F-117).

~~~
cmurf
The F117 is an inherently unstable aircraft, which is why it's also
maneuverable. Passenger planes are designed to be dynamically and statically
stable, they're harder to stall, easier to recover from a stall, are not prone
to stall spins, etc.

Whether the main wing or the horizontal stabilizer stalls first, the plane is
recoverable (including with a failed powerplant). That's not a given with
other designs. As soon as you go with a candard design, you have to ensure the
canard always stalls first or you've got an unrecoverability problem.

Existing designs are less complex is what it comes down to.

~~~
pdelbarba
Side note: in the case where you can allow the canard to stall before the wing
without significant design compromises, this lends itself to a much less
violent stall behavior. IIRC a good example of this is the Rutan Long EZ

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rb808
The market is getting busy See also

Canada's Bombardier CSeries CS100 - 120 passengers.

Japans Mitsubishi Regional Jet - 80 passengers.

Brazil's Embraer E-Jet - 120 passengers.

~~~
JBReefer
I'm not the world's closest observer, but those aren't perfect comparisons.

The C-series nearly bankrupted Bombardier, and a lot of it's competitive
advantages aren't things the market once. It's also much smaller, and frankly
I've never been in a good Bombardier. There's a lot of CRJs, but they're more
expensive and lower quality than ERJs. I don't think the C-series is any
better. I've also dealt with Bombardier's aerospace division, and they're kind
of unpleasant. Not serious competition at all.

Mitsubishi - 80 pax is half of this, more in line with the E-jet. It's a
regional, not a direct competitor. This is not going to run with the big boys
of the DFW-LGA/ATL-ORD type flights.

E-Jet - Great planes, again not the same league. The C919 carries "158-174"
pax - that's a totally class of plane. The E-jet line tops out at 120, as this
line is regional jets, most are smaller. Bombardier is totally fucked here,
CRJ's are terrible. I think the E-Jet is going to do great. The 919 competes
with the 737/320 class, which until now has been a duopoly with some TERRIBLE
Russian attempts to compete.

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ris
News to me that technology has a nationality.

