This might help though, it's about time that the Chinks were made to suffer bigly for supplying the Russians weapons in Ukraine Their big hopes for the C919 should be dashed by cutting off supplies of the LEAP-1C manufactured by CFM International.
An expert's point of view on a current event.
If China Arms Russia, the U.S. Should Kill China’s Aircraft Industry
Beijing’s aerospace future is uniquely dependent on Western companies. U.S. and EU trade sanctions could bring its indigenous aviation sector to a halt.
By Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping meets in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, the war in Ukraine will be high on the agenda. While the Chinese leader might pressure Russia to pursue a peace deal, there are also worries in Western capitals that the authoritarian allies could agree to work together more closely.
A Chinese decision to provide Russia with weapons would change the world. Only China has the stockpiles and industrial capacity to replace Russia’s ruinous equipment losses in its war against Ukraine. Worse, it would help cement a Russia–China alliance, one pitted against Western interests. U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have warned China’s leadership that providing lethal technologies to Russia, on top of the non-lethal aid already provided, would have serious consequences.
Indeed, the West does have some leverage. One option would be to bring China’s commercial aircraft industry to a halt, thereby striking a blow against Beijing’s economic, technological, and transport aspirations. It would be a major blow to Xi’s prestige, too, since he has made technological self-sufficiency a key priority for the country.
The aviation industry is not just a matter of pride; it is foundational to China’s infrastructure and an essential mode of transport for many middle-class Chinese. According to the World Bank, passenger air traffic in China grew more than tenfold between 2000 and the 2019 peak, from 62 million passengers to 660 million passengers.
The exponential growth in passenger numbers has made China a major customer for Western-made jets: based on manufacturer-reported numbers, in 2000, China took 2 percent of world jetliner production. In 2018, the peak year for imports, it took 23 percent of world jetliner production.
The United States and its allies have already decided to decouple from China when it comes to semiconductors and telecommunications systems. Jetliner manufacturing would be a logical next step. After all, China’s vaunted commercial transports—the MA700 regional turboprop transport, ARJ21 regional jet, C919 narrow-body passenger plane, and proposed CR929 wide-body are heavily dependent upon imported Western technologies and systems.
While China wants to develop home-grown substitutes for these imported components, ultimately creating purely Chinese jets, this will be a very long road. Besides, modern jet producers rely on purchases of best-in-class technologies from a globalized industry; autarky is a very bad way to run a jetliner industry. Even the U.S. jetliner industry has long been wedded to industrial partners in Canada, France, Japan, the U.K., and many other countries.
Engines are the weakest link in China’s civil aviation plans. Airframes and aircraft systems and technologies may be difficult to develop, but jet engines are at a completely different level in terms of barriers to entry. In fact, only three companies, located in two countries (General Electric (GE) and Raytheon/Pratt & Whitney in the United States and Rolls-Royce in the U.K.) build commercial jet engines. France’s Safran plays a role as a partner to GE in the CFM joint venture, but otherwise there are no other sourcing options.
Russia could not become a jet engine supplier option for China. The Soviet Union had a second-rate commercial engine industry for mostly domestic applications, but Russia’s efforts to revive it have been uncertain and very slow. Today, Russia remains completely dependent on Western aircraft and engines; it has only been able to keep its existing aircraft flying by illegally evading sanctions.
Only tiny numbers of obsolete Russian models have been manufactured over the last few decades. There are plans for new engines, but international sanctions, massive corruption, and the brain drain of the last year have likely doomed whatever chances Russia’s commercial aviation engine industry once had. Besides, the priority is now military systems.
As a consequence of the limited number of jet engine suppliers, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China’s (COMAC) ARJ21 regional jet and C919 are both powered by GE or GE/Safran engines, imported from the United States. For the ARJ21, there is no backup plan to GE’s CF34 engine.
For the C919, China is developing its CJ-1000A engine as an alternative to the GE/Safran Leap-1C, but it won’t enter service until the end of the decade. And the CJ-1000A is also heavily dependent upon key imported Western technologies. Like China’s jetliners, China’s first attempt at a commercial engine could easily be shut down with technology embargoes.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/20/china-russia-aircraft-comac-xi-putin/
