If it makes you feel any better I understood what you meantLOL. You're basically saying you want to see 100% made in China engines to be mature enough to be competitive in the world market. Weather they are actually selected is secondary but they are at least there in the running and second to none.
When it comes to commercial aviation a lot of factors come into play and most times performance comes in a distant third or fourth. There are the usual politicking and lobbying and what not that goes on.
As you grow older and move into the 'real world' you'll realized that a LOT of acquisitions both civilian and military has more to do with politics, ass kissing than actual real world performance and capabilities.
Back to your original question I don't think you have to be that pessismistic. I think it's only a matter of time before China becomes competitive in the world of jet turbines. Maybe not this year or even next but certainly in your lifetime since you're still pretty young.
I fully agree that when it comes to huge deals sometimes politics play the primary role, but you have to have something there in the first place, right?
Take the HQ-9 bid for Turkey as an example, such a huge and important deal involves almost all politics, but at least China has something to offer, has something to compete with the Americans, Russians, and Europeans in the first place. And despite huge setbacks in terms of politics, China still won the bid at first, right? So although politics might change the situation (Turkey turning to US or Europe for the bid), China still made her HQ-9 known to other potential buyers, and showed to the rest that we have something that's at least on par with the best out there.
Take the JF17 project with Pakistan as another example, I would say that the politics are actually in favour of China in the project, but as a matter of fact JF17s are still powered by Russian engines, why? Simply because the WS13 is still in development and hasn't fully matured yet. Imagine today China has something similar to RD93 in all specifications, I wouldn't say that the Pakistanis will definitely buy it, but we all know the likelihood of it is pretty high, provided there IS such an engine available.
If we have it and we don't get it, we might say that the Americans or the Europeans are playing tricks and using politics to influence some smaller countries, but to think again, isn't it kinda sad that we can't even make the Americans be bothered to play politics in terms of engines? You know, sometimes not beating US but successfully posing a real competition to the US, is already a huge achievement in itself. And we're not even there, YET, in engine technologies.
I'm not sure these two examples are clear enough or not but I tried my best.....
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