Spending money does not mean intelligence, intelligence is free, and the real inventions are not by spending money, but by thinking new solutions, and the best Solutions are the cheapest and more efficient.
Ideas are done by the brain, not by dollars, dollars do not think, people think.
Russian engineering had a very difficult time from 1991 to the early part of the last decade, today`s Russia is a BRIC economy, but is the most likely economy to get a high stardard of living in the next decade and still will remain a powerful nation and Russia has one of the most advanced aerospace industries, and China buys Russian aerospace technology, Russia does not copy Chinese jets or engines.
Sukhoi superjet has more non Russian custmers than ARJ-21 non chinese customers[video=youtube;eiPNXWhF3RM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiPNXWhF3RM[/video]
Without money to implement new designs and do research, your knowledge capital is static. It's not as simple as having smart people, or even a good education system (both of which Russia has a lot of). Those smart people can't discover, learn, or do anything new if they don't have access to those funds to really test and explore ideas. A smart hobo is still just a smart hobo, not an innovator or nobel prize winner.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian aerospace was second only to the US, but a field and industry moves very far in 30 years, and those were 30 years that Russian R&D was almost static, which also had the unfortunate effect of bleeding a lot of their knowledge capital to competitors. China
bought Russian aerospace, but by now it's increasingly clear this will not be the sustained trend. If it were, China would be buying PAK-FAs instead of testing the J-20.
That said, it's not like China is filled with stupid people either. While Russia has been stagnant China has found the momentum to make significant gains. Money enables smart people. Smart people enable progress. They've practically reached parity with Russia in terms of technology and design potential at this point. While they lag in a few things, like turbofans, not only are they moving quickly there, but are already ahead of Russia on critical things like electronics and material research. To make this clear I'm not tooting China's horn, keep in mind that China's lead in Russia is significant only in a comparison between the two. Both are still behind the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea in electronics and materials (for some of them).
You can point to the Superjet all you want, but that's just an anecdote that doesn't change the broader picture. Let's put this in perspective. Even just 20 years ago Russia was still number two in the world and China was a nobody. Yet somehow we're talking about the Superjet, which started in 2000, and the ARJ-21, which started in 2002, in the same conversation. To further demonstrate this point, the ARJ-21 is China's first attempt at domestic aviation, while the Superjet draws on decades of experience. If these two are truly comparable examples this doesn't bode well for Russia. A 30 year old barely beating a 10 year old in a fight does not reflect well on the 30 year old.
Then of course, there's the C919, which seems to be a far morel indigenized design. It's not like China's stopping at the ARJ-21. The ARJ-21 were the diapers, and the C919 are the pull-ups. Sooner or later this baby is going to get potty trained.
Russia had their first 4th generation fighter design in the late 70s and China had their first in the late 90s but they both revealed their 5th generation designs within a year from each other. For a country that used to have the 2nd best aerospace industry in the world, something is horribly wrong with this picture. If 1) R&D funding wasn't so great, and 2) if Russia was doing so well, Sukhoi's competition would not be AVIC, but Boeing. There's a reason for why this happened, and unless you can point to a reason why these trends won't continue, they will continue.
This isn't just about where China and Russia are right now, but where they were 10, 20, 30 years ago, and where they will be 10, 20, and 30 years from now. Reality does not stand still.
