Airbus is a concentration of all the civil airliner development capabilities of the participating countries. None of the countries that are a part of Airbus now have a competitive airliner development capability of their own, which is fine for them because their entire populations are smaller than the population of a single Chinese province. However, China is a behemoth and will not tolerate not having a completely independent competitive airliner development capability. If the Sino-Russian venture is able to grow into a truly competitive firm then that's great but China, unlike the European countries, will also maintain an independent domestic alternative.