China establishes company to make its own jumbo jets

BEIJING — China has established a homegrown company to make passenger jumbo jets, state media reported Sunday _ a step forward in the country's quest to become less dependent on Boeing and Airbus.

China Commercial Aircraft Co. was established in Shanghai with registered capital of 19 billion yuan $2.7 billion, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It said the central government and the Shanghai government are among the major shareholders, as are China's two main aircraft manufacturing and servicing companies, China Aviation Industry Corp. I and China Aviation Industry Corp. II, which were split off from state-owned China Aviation Industry Corp. in 1999.

Europe's Airbus has forecast that China's domestic market will increase fivefold by 2026. Airbus and Chicago-based rival Boeing dominate the market for commercial airplanes carrying 100 or more people.

Xinhua said Commercial Aircraft Co. will be able to make planes with more than 150 seats.

General manager Jin Zhuanglong said in a Xinhua interview that it was too early to say when a Chinese-developed jumbo jet would be taking off, as it would take a long time to develop homegrown talent and do research.

"According to the development history of Airbus and Boeing, the development and success of civil planes cannot be realized by relying on one or two generations," he said.

Comments

[GEM-592]

Some good issues raised, but about Boeing I could care less. In this and other industries, they've been illegally transfering technology to the Chinese for a long time, and anyone with any sense who has worked for them can't help but see what's going on. They do this to protect what they see as their long term market, knowing the days of their US-based business are numbered. Another company that calls itself a US-company whenever it is advantageous, but will break any law and go overseas when it's time to make money. Oh yes, their military business too, only less visibly for now. Don't Boeing employees realize what they've been working for?

[GerryS]

and the chinese will paint everyting red, in lead paint-

[loki]

we use to paint everything with lead paint, and not that long ago.

[WIpatriot]

and look how we turned out.

[Sumocat]

Good for them. They build just about everything else in China anyway.

[MajorKong]

If the Russian aerospace industry is any example, engines may be a problem for them.

The Russians have always made good airframes but their engines, while plenty powerful, are fuel thirsty. For that reason they've had a hard time selling their planes even to Aeroflot, which is now using mostly Airbus products.

[michelv]

They can always buy the engines if they have to.

[loki]

They could just buy an engine company. Maybe Pratt Whitney or GE. After all, there are several American firms who sold out to the Chinese. Uhmmm, Remember a computer company called IBM?? Use to be big around the world. I think they are now, Lenovo..

[mamacat]

The Chinese are very hardworking, intelligent people. The U.S. has been doing some very stupid things lately. If the U.S. doesn't reject the culture of idiocy in domestic and foreign affairs that it has embraced during the Bush years, it may find that it is soon in very worse shape than it already is.

History is full of stories of Empires that thought they would last forever. None of them ever has.

[loki]

But to many Americans, and especially corporations who control the majority of our gov, love what is going on. They are short sighted and see immediate profits. They dont look 2 , 3 or 10 years out into the future to see what may, and is happening now from these immediate gains. We are in a I want it all and I want it now environment, and they dont care how they get it.
Yup, the Chinese are very smart, and they spend a lot of money on education and health care for all. The one thing I dont like is that if you move from you city or village to another, you lose your free health care. No portability. But besides the point is that they are investing in their future. While in America we invest in our personal greed. To hell with education , training programs or a healthy public. It could mean less immediate profits for corporate elitists.

[michelv]

No, they don't have to reverse engineer anything. China has been doing stuff for Boeing for decades.

This is how it works with all industries. They set up factories in China to save a few bucks on production costs. They train a lot of people, get the factories up and running, and then after a few years, some of the key Chinese folks leave and start their own shops with all the knowledge they learned.

So for the sake of saving a few bucks over a few years, these American companies basically spawn competitors that come and bit them in the ass 5 to 10 years later. But who cares, since by then, the executives cashed in all the money the "made" for the company. Sure, the gave a house down the road, but they made their nice big bonuses, and that's all that counts. God bless America, where you can sell off your children for a few bucks. Hey, Bush is doing it as we speak, by pissing away trillions that our kids will have to pay.

[loki]

This is the epitomey of outsourcing.

" The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is going to be big. The site for it is a four-acre plot on the Tidal Basin, not far from the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials on the National Mall in Washington, D.C."

Now here is the part that I find incredible.

" Lei Yixin shows off a model of a Martin Luther King Jr. statue at his studio in Hunan province, China, last year. "

A statue representing one of the most important people in America, representing one of the most important times in America, and representing freedoms and liberties of millions of Americans, and its statue creation is outsourced to China, a communist country. I would bet it had everything to do with dollars . Here is the link, go read it yourself. I find it appalling.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90348208

[loki]

I dont like it, but I cant say that I blame them. After all, it was our greed driven corporations with the help of their political puppets in DC that gave the Chinese the technologies, the abilities and the know how by outsourcing everything to China all in the name of cheap labor and immediate huge profits. And now, to quote an rev wright quote, The chickens are coming home to roost. All those Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other Ivy league trained CEOS and Politicians have used their education of greed and profit to its fullest. Destroying the US in the process. But they learned well and put into practice everything Harvard and others teach them. Ah, Ivy League Universities have groomed the horsemen of the American appocylips.

[KillTheMessenger]

China has 3500 years of undisrupted scholarship history. That you don't know about it means nothing to the Chinese. They teach their very young that in order to be something in life, they have to learn. China, at its core, is a meritocracy. If you want proof, all you have to do is to go to any top US university and look at the number of Chinese American students in engineering disciplines. And look at the number of Chinese students, too. You will be surprised. If you think we are pushing technology on the Chinese, I can only conclude that you don't know anything substantial about technology or the Chinese.

It is very dangerous not to know ones enemies. It is a sure way to lose a battle.

[Amalek]

I am a professor at China's top university.

Chinese engineering students are moving ahead of their US counterparts. There are more of them and they study with an intensity that few US kids will match. China is not going to need to copy Boeing or Airbus designs. By the time they get this one built, it will be the other way around.

The US needs to upgrade its education system from kindergarten if it is going to remain competitive. I don't think we will do it. We are too fat and lazy.

[bola47]

if you have seen any of the pictures from the beijing auto show, then you know how they make copies of european cars. i hope boeing has design patents otherwise you will start to see copies of the 747 & 777 in the skies over china.

[yaoster]

As if America's own industrial revolution didn't include exact copies of British designs?

[KillTheMessenger]

Design patents in the US mean nothing in China. IP in China is a very difficult problem. And no amount of fuming about it will help. But please don't think the Chinese are not developing their own technology. They do. Just like the Japanese they started out by learning from the West. They have long past the point where imitation is the main technology driver.

[JScott]

Yup and we can expect some sorta gap in their QC when one of them crashes because they shortcutted on engineering and safety and such. And you'd think instead they woulda started up a more advanced rail transport company that could build a successful maglev or something like that, as usual they go with jet aircraft because it show progress and prestige.

[loki]

Good god man , the US has been copying the euro designs for years. They even use to use it in to promote themselves in ads. Everyone copies. Its US corporations that expedited the process in China due to their greed. The chinese people are very smart, and very hard working. Even what many Americans would refer to as dumb villagers are usually better educated than most US college grads. I know more Chinese who can name all 50 states and the capitals than I do US college grads. And those are the simple basics here in the US , or use to be. If our gov put 1/10 the money and effort into education as the Chinese do, we might have a fighting chance. But most of the graduates today are just stupid. They might be book smart, but they cant apply anything but their mouths. And that does nothing for progress.

[AdobePhsyko]

There's only one problem with a Chinese Jet. Once you get to your destination ,You'll want to fly again in a half an hour
Rimshot/Cymbal Crash !

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

LOL.

Jumbo jet, jumbo shrimp, same diff.

[crazylikeafox]

In about 20 years times Americas will be the ones working in sweatshops making junk to sell the Chinese. They will have all the money. Our factories will be owned by them. They will pay us nothing for our natural resources because we will owe them so much money and have nothing to pay up with.

Get ready America, you will work for pennies a day the way they are now.

[loki]

My Dad use to always say " give it time, sooner or later Americans will be jumping the fence to get to the good jobs in Mexico" He was so correct.

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Clinton and Bush can be thanked for the effective rise of China. We abandoned our stance towards communists and this is what we have today. Both presidents contributed to the destruction of American manufacturing and today we have 3rd rate products that have no longevity. Gone are the days when people would own their TV's for years on out. These days people buy a TV every year or every other year. Gone are the days when people used to keep their cars well after they were paid off. Now we have a perpetual car payments in the form of "Lease" programs. Gone are the days when people worked hard and were rewarded for their hard work. Today we have the CEO smiling and telling you how you are no longer needed because Chang will do the same work you will for a penny a year and no bathroom breaks.

[PalleKuling]

I bought the cheapest 28" TV I could find back in 1998 - it was Chinese and it still works perfectly. The reason I upgraded to a flatscreen has nothing to do with quality... I just wanted something BIGGER!

And that is unfortunately the problem - we want new stuff all the time. It is demand that drives production. If you want to blame someone - blame this the lifestyle magazines, MTV Cribs, whatever... but just don't say that it is because of product quality. That is just plain wrong.

[Amalek]

But Clinton and Bush succeeded in exporting capitalism to China. We won. Capitalism beat communism. Why the sour grapes? Don't like getting beat at your own game?

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Clinton and Bush exported our manufacturing to China. Nothing has changed as far as China and the Communist regim. Clinton and Bush just finanaced China to ensure that communism would thrive and would not die like the USSR did.

[thegreatgiginthesky]

It is one thing to get beat at your own game. It is another thing to play the game on a playing field that is heavily favoring the opponent.

[tulsey]

The question was, as China embraced capitalism, would it become more democratic? No, it became republican. Chinese worker, human, safety rights, not to mention underhanded business practices are a neocon's wet dream. That said, they do a better job protecting their people from natural disasters al la Katrina, Beat at our own game indeed.

[loki]

No, Clinton and Bush are just puppets. Corporations and the wonderful American Style Capitalist can be thanked for this.

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Buy your own jumbo jet at your local Walmart or Sams Club.

[Viper]

And you know what Amercia's largest import is to CHINA... scrap... Yeah America!!!!... Number 1 in SCRAP!

We need to get off our asses and start being a producing nation again and send free trade and no tarriffs to competing countries like China tthat charge us 22.5% or mexico 15% to the scrap heap!

It may be too late to save America.

Regards

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Did you forget what Supreme leader Bush has said? He has claimed that we are to be a service economy, not a manufacturing one. So get back on your knees and continue "servicing" the Chinese, Indians and any others that they command you to.

[Amalek]

LOL, that is so funny.

[loki]

Yeah, I can see Americas new slogan.
No longer will it be

" The land of the free, and the home of the brave "

but

" Would you like fries with that"

[PalleKuling]

"Scrap?" Really? Why make something like that up?

Top US Exports to China 2007
Sources: US International Trade Commission, US Department of Commerce, and US Census Bureau

Commodity Description ($ billion):
10.7 Electrical machinery & equipment
8.9 Power generation equipment
7.2 Air & spacecraft
4.2 Oil seeds & oleaginous fruits
3.6 Plastics & articles thereof
3.3 Optics & medical equipment
2.8 Iron & steel
2.2 Copper & articles thereof
2.1 Organic chemicals
2.05 Pulp & paperboard

[Sumocat]

Nice list. Too bad it does nothing to support your argument. Scrap would not be categorized as such. Instead it would be broken up into such things as plastics, metals, pulp and discarded machinery, which are items on your list. In addition, scrap, relatively speaking, is cheap. Thus, your list by dollar amount does not disprove the possibility that our top export to China, as measured by weight and/or volume, is scrap.

[Mavin1620]

Illinois voter has it right on agriculture, but China is working to become self-sufficient, and close its borders again.

If China had not pushed out sourcing to Boeing and Airbus, they would not have had the skills or the the technology to do this. Boeing can't get the Dreamliner to assemble right. Is that an accident? Even the name of the company sticks it to Boeing.