Both China and Russia are building alternatives to Boeing/Airbus commercial airliners. But are in two completely different situations.
COMAC relies on international suppliers, probably hoping that will make it easier for them to be allowed to fly outside China and then over time they can use more and more domestic suppliers. Whereas the Russians are completely cut off from international suppliers and travel, and have to resurrect their airliner projects which have been more or less dormant since the Soviet times.
I think both will be succesful over time; they have huge internal markets that can sponsor quite a bit of development cost.
The reason they dipped in terms of planes is directly related to sanctions and western countries pulling out based on the article you shared. Worth noting, the foreign parts Sukhoi Superjet 100 (a very good regional jet) are in the process of being fully "Russified" and the MC-21 is actually a true domestic plane vs the Chinese C-919:
Also, Russia just surpassed Japan to become #4 in terms of GDP PPP (the number that matters), was recently reclassified as a high-income county and is expected to experience relatively high GDP growth, and that's even under the heaviest sanction regime on the planet x3 and after getting cut off from SWIFT:
> Worth noting, the foreign parts Sukhoi Superjet 100 (a very good regional jet)
A very good based on what measurement? Operators have complained about extremely poor reliability, and there have been a high amount of crashes.
> and the MC-21 is actually a true domestic plane vs the Chinese C-919:
The MS-21 isn't domestic, it uses Western avionics and engines. There's a russified version which is supposed to be launched in 2025-2026, but it's unknown if that would happen considering it's using the Aviadvigatel PD-14 engines which are still undergoing design refinement and testing. It could literally be years before the engines are ready, so when the jet enters service is anyone's guess.
> Also, Russia just surpassed Japan to become #4 in terms of GDP PPP (the number that matters), was recently reclassified as a high-income county and is expected to experience relatively high GDP growth, and that's even under the heaviest sanction regime on the planet x3 and after getting cut off from SWIFT:
A big issue with these metrics is that they use the official exchange rate for RUB to USD exchange rate, which is entirely theoretical since it's impossible to trade the two due to the sanctions. The real exchange rate is probably much worse for the RUB, so these metrics based on the official theoretical one are highly misleading.
> Also, Russia just surpassed Japan to become #4 in terms of GDP PPP (the number that matters), was recently reclassified as a high-income county and is expected to experience relatively high GDP growth,
You can get a lot of GDP growth if you focus your entire economy on making war materiel. It's not exactly durable growth and it doesn't really increase your citizens' quality of life.
Russia's industrial development outside of refurbishing Soviet stockpiles for war is extremely limited. Ditto for its civilian development: come on, 20% of citizens are still waiting for indoor plumbing.
GDP PPP is a useful number in comparing relatively-like economies, but here it breaks down completely.
GDP is sort of a nonsense metric for "ability to get things done". A huge portion of that GDP are things like rents extracted via intellectual property so it doesn't tell you anything about ability to manufacture anything.
Example: California woman sends her kids to daycare a few weeks after birth and goes back to her job (high GDP), Russian woman stays home with her children (no GDP). Now wait 50 years until you only have neglected iPad kids raised by busy parents left, how many planes you building now? And the ones you manage to build? Maybe they start falling out the sky, doors coming off the hinges, that sort of thing. Maybe the engineers don't have enough of a backbone to stand up to their boss because they never really experienced secure attachment, and some people die.
The economy is growing because of massive government expenditures on defense. The same thing happened with Nazi Germany. It's not sustainable.
"Buoyant commodity prices" is also known as inflation. They have high inflation despite having a federal interest rate of 18%, which is sky high. Not great signs for their economy.
Not at the same scale. At the peak of the Vietnam War, the US spent less than 10% of GDP on the war. Most of the time it was only half of that (for comparison it’s less than 3% at the moment).
Russia currently spend about 40% of the GDP on Ukraine war ( coming off my memory, may not be 100% accurate). That can’t be sustainable and they will have long lasting impact.
Why would they need to borrow when they can continue to sell commodities (which the EU and US continue to buy, btw)? Besides, there's no indication that they are running out of reserves. Wasn't one of Putins first moves to get off of foreign debt?
They’re going to have a hard time exporting oil and gas if Ukraine keeps attacking their refineries. Repairing those refineries requires equipment that Russia has a hard time getting thanks to sanctions.
Those commodities won't even come close to covering their spending spree. And their reserves are running dry very quickly. Likely by the end of this year.
COMAC relies on international suppliers, probably hoping that will make it easier for them to be allowed to fly outside China and then over time they can use more and more domestic suppliers. Whereas the Russians are completely cut off from international suppliers and travel, and have to resurrect their airliner projects which have been more or less dormant since the Soviet times.
I think both will be succesful over time; they have huge internal markets that can sponsor quite a bit of development cost.