Well the danger for China is it gets cut off from the world supply chain and builds its own inferior closed, government-run system that innovates slower. Meanwhile the rest of the world market globalized system is racing ahead faster as each country's companies specialize in a part of the supply chain. So in this case it is not a matter of catching up, it will actually fall farther and farther behind. The Russian aerospace industry has existed for almost 100 years yet it is still behind.
Chinese Aviation Industry
- Thread starter FriedRiceNSpice
- Start date
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Neither of these 2 people have any (aerospace) engineering background; they literally don't know what they're talking about but are just saying what they hope is true. If China can be self-sufficient in military aircraft manufacturing, commercial aviation is not far away.
It's not really a danger. It's a danger to think that whatever the US tries to do will work rather than backfire. Most countries in the world are not blinded by the desperation to stay supreme, and they know that the biggest risk is that they will lose their market in China and China will become self-sufficient. That is why they will resist America's pleas and threats to stay away from China.
Secondly, Russia has a population 1/10th the size of China. China has a greater population and a much greater STEM scientist population than the developed world combined. Innovation generally only comes from the developed world; there's no need to lump the populations of swaths of third world countries into this comparison as they are largely irrelevant.
Finally, the developed world runs not just on scientists but specifically on Chinese scientists as Chinese are prevalent at the top of almost every tech sector in every advanced country. This is where the competition is at, and the ability of a country to attract hard-working Chinese talent largely determines its abilities in technology.
For these reasons, even if a complete decoupling of the world occurred, which is looking more and more like an American fantasy by the day, China has already achieve the technological base it would need to build off to likely leap ahead on its own anyway, and in far less time than 30 years.
The soviet industry was competitive with the west until it collapsed. At most, they were behind 5 years in any specific field. China has a far more open system and larger economic base than the soviet union ever had. Also china this time around will be partnering with countries like Russia, who are also aerospace partners.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Aboulafia was wrong so many times I lost count . Last time around he badmouth ARJ 21 calling it heavy, outdated compare to Mitsubishi MRJ Yet it is today mass produced at the rate of 30 planes per year While MRJ is cancelled.
ARJ 21 safely transport at least 1.5 million by now while MRJ does not even finish testing yet! So much for expert Aboulafia
China's ARJ21 regional aircraft serves 1 mln passengers
66,324 views•Jul 22, 2020
China's independently developed ARJ21 regional aircraft has served over 1 million passengers. Currently, there are 33 ARJ21 airplanes serving on air routes linking 56 cities.
Well we can draw parallel with China's space industry. Is it under US sanction? Yes. Is it 100% self-sufficient? No. Is it self sufficient enough to withstand the sanctions and play catch up? Yes.
If China is starting from scratch, 30 years isn't that long. Given the expertise already gained, I would say 15 years give or take? Sanctions from US would put things in high gear.
Even in semiconductor where situation is more dire (because China has been stupid enough to totally abandon certain areas and fall far behind), thanks to moore's law reaching its limit, 15years isn't such a long shot to catch up.
If China is starting from scratch, 30 years isn't that long. Given the expertise already gained, I would say 15 years give or take? Sanctions from US would put things in high gear.
Even in semiconductor where situation is more dire (because China has been stupid enough to totally abandon certain areas and fall far behind), thanks to moore's law reaching its limit, 15years isn't such a long shot to catch up.
I gets even better. With the space industry, China was sanctioned completely, meaning it had to develop every component in the technology stack, including ones it didn't even know existed. This was about confronting the unknown unknown.
With semi-conductors, china had access to the whole stack, prior to it being pulled away. Also not every single semi-conductor industry is under sanction. In this case, catch-up is easier because the process and all the interfaces are already known, its just about replicating the components.
Come on - whichever way you cut it, the ARJ21 can hardly be considered as success, that is just not objectively true! Had it been held to the same standards of development progress as the MRJ, it would have been cancelled several times over. Too-big-to-fail Chinese state support accounts for the fact that it made it into service, not superior engineering. In terms of technology, the MRJ aimed to be quite a bit more advanced, including efficient GTF engines.
1 million passengers sounds like a lot, but for an aircraft that entered "service" 4 years earlier and numbers 33 active airframes that is in fact a dismal performance! Take for example the SSJ100, itself not exactly a resounding market success and beset with spares shortages which affect daily utilization rates. By October 2020, one single airline (Azimuth) operating 12 Superjets had managed to transport 2.7 million passengers since starting service in late 2017 and for 2021 alone, it aims to hit 2 million! In other words, 170% more passengers in 75% of the time, using 64% fewer aircraft - the ARJ21 has achieved little more than 10% of the passengers per aircraft and year. And that's compared to an aircraft that is by no means the best-performing candidate in this respect.
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The ARJ was kept alive not because of too big to fail logic but because even with all its problems and failures the policy and politics behind the program put sustaining technical development over commercial success. This will also be true of COMAC.
Isn't putting politics before commercial success the (or at least an acceptable) definition of too bit to fail? The F-35 has been described thus for that reason.
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I wouldn’t say that it was politics over commercial success, but industrial development over commercial success.