CHINA, A WINGED GIANT

China has assumed a new global position when placing in active service, in early 2017, the Chengdu J-20 air superiority fighter. The country with millenary culture acquired international relevance not only for having the only fifth-generation combat aircraft produced, and in activity, outside the United States, or for having conceived the aircraft in less than one decade, but specially for consolidating its technological rise with the development of a cutting-edge aeronautical industry in less than 30 years.

With the fast Chinese economic growth from mid-1980, local authorities began to give priority to several strategic segments. The advance of high-tech electronic industry, mainly of semiconductors, took place in parallel with the expansion of the civil aviation market. In terms of air transportation scale, China has consecutively kept the position of second largest world market over the past 12 years, getting closer to the United States.

Seen by the West as a huge low-cost labor market attached to 1 billion potential consumers, China took advantage of this foreign perception. Peking perceived in this international view the possibility of changing its history. With the heavy investments from abroad, the country has started one of the biggest industrial projects ever and now comes to view as a player able to compete with protagonists of this industry, such as Airbus, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The Chinese aeronautical industry evolution demonstrates the interest of the country in the aerospace sector. Today China has a complex and well-structured industry and cutting-edge research centers, which could ensure it access, already in the next decade, to the select group of sector giants.

With strong political and cultural influence, the Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and, supported by the Soviet Union, started the embryonic but robust industrialization process, still based on technologies and processes from Russia and its allies. Soon the result came to view and the country was capable to develop nuclear weapons in 1964. Only two years before, Peking had obtained the license to produce the MiG-21, renamed as Chengdu J-7.

Upon the death of its dictator in 1976, China starts a wide reformist program and promotes an economic openness. One of the bases of the Chinese industry at the time was reverse engineering, which was applied both to occidental models and to Soviet aircrafts. Even without having generated any relevant innovation, the process gave rise to industrial learning, ensuring the Chinese engineers access to production technologies and materials.

During the 1980’s, with the rapprochement between Washington and Peking, McDonnell Douglas sent to China the production of components. At the same time, thousands of manufacturers of electronics, apparel, energy, etc., hurried to set up production units in the territory of the Asian giant in search of low-cost labor and a completely unexplored domestic consumer market of one billion people.

With the fast economic growth, the Chinese government began to create national research centers investing on independent technology. Although many people state that most of the knowledge basis comes from external studies, China in fact has created an industrial network capable of conceiving any project however audacious it is.

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