The IDF's engine is pretty old turbofan technology, so tech transfer wouldn't be terribly unusual (the South Koreans build the RKAF's F-15's engines themselves), and RR did transfer the Spey technology wholesale to China.
They may sell you yesterday's tech, but when what you need is the today's generation tech, and that's exactly something nobody would ever sell you the know-how.
Top-of-the-line stuff is something you don't sell the know-how.
That said, even with all the contracts France signed with China, those are all "second tier" stuff to France, though it's already superior to the "top-of-the-line" China can make.
Come on!
Whatever the contract with PRC, you must sell your know-how, build up a chinese joint venture if not yet created, holding the patents. We want a bit of this and a bit of that.. What a big deal! Mr Sarkozy, ousted by french people, would have been aware of that before signing out his contracts with mainland. Now the aftermaths? A declining french industry and a terrific unemployment rate there. Never forget that the taiwanaese contract was a plain rainbow in the sky of french military industry. That was in the 90s.
Instead you should blame the current global economy, as well as lack of interstate wars that calls for sophisticated weaponry - back during the Iran-Iraq war, that was the boom era for France defense industry. Face it, the good old days of easy money and easy credits is no more - unless you got oil or gold or diamond or REM mines in your country -and that mean everyone pinching their wallets. The French themselves pinch their wallets too, so much so that their domestic order not enough to drive down the unit cost of Rafale, neither it helps to give foreign customers the confidence; F-35 might turning into a classic Ponzi Scheme in reality, but as long as USAF+USN+USMC still committed to it, everyone else have no choice but to keep pumping money in, in short, "too big to fail".
It's all about money, everybody do their math, if Taiwan can't offer the better, long-term bargain then you're suckered, naturally. The French arms industry ain't running a charity, neither does the American or anyone else.
France's problem has nothing to do with Taiwan, it's a global quagmire far bigger than anything Taiwan or China can fix - well, unless Taiwan willing to payout all of France's national debt or something to that scale, but you should know how crazy such notion it is.
