Over the past few years, China has been investing heavily in the manufacture of the C919, which has 28 domestic and overseas customers and a total global order book of 815 aircraft. Some Chinese experts claim that they can compete with American and European aircraft manufacturers, but as the delivery date of the airliner has been delayed again and again, the world is beginning to wonder if China’s dream of building an airliner will follow Huawei’s footsteps in the face of U.S. sanctions.
According to media reports, the C919 commercial airliner produced by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) is not progressing well. The C919, which competes with the French Airbus A320neo and the American Boeing 737 MAX, was scheduled to produce its first plane in late 2015, but it did not make its first test flight until May 2017, and only six planes have been built for test flights so far.
According to an internal COMAC document dated July 2020, the company aims to produce 150 C919s per year during the “maturity period” after 2019, according to the Voice of America, but no specific schedule has been set for this goal.
However, Yusof, founder of the aviation industry analyst firm Endau Analytics, has reservations about whether COMAC will be able to deliver on time. He told the Voice of America that the plane is nearly complete, but because China relies so heavily on Western supply chains, such as many third-party suppliers from Europe and the U.S., and because of the impact of the neo-crowning epidemic, he estimates it may take until 2022 for delivery to be successful.
The C919 is completely dependent on U.S. technology for key technologies.
The C919 is known as a “Chinese made aircraft”, but it has been questioned whether it is actually 100% self-developed. According to Chinese official media, the C919 has achieved a nearly 60% localization rate. Some media said, C919 airliner is very dependent on foreign technology, such as power system, avionics flight control system, fuel system, power system, landing gear, etc. are directly adopted foreign mature products and technology, or manufactured by Chinese-foreign joint venture, while China is mainly responsible for the fuselage, wings, tail, interior and other design parts. Therefore, some experts in the industry said, China now has its own technology, simply can not let the aircraft safely up into the sky.
Richard Abulafia, vice president and aviation analyst at the Thiel Group, said that China’s big aircraft engineering relies heavily on U.S. technology and that without it, Chinese aviation engineering would be “derailed”. He said that the real challenge China is facing now is the engine or avionics system, without these related Western technologies, China can not make a big plane at all, because “it does not make sense to build an aluminum tube with a flag on the tail”.
U.S. companies in control of the C919’s aviation future? How does China break out?
Some experts believe that the challenges facing China’s aerospace industry are no less challenging than the semiconductor outages at Huawei and ZTE. Gansett, senior advisor and chairman of the board of directors of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., believes that China’s dependence on the West for aircraft parts and assembly is even stronger than Huawei’s dependence on the West. With China’s recent strategic development path and tensions in U.S.-China relations, it is very likely that the U.S. will sanction the Chinese aviation industry in the future. He believes that the deterioration of US-China relations and China’s own military development will be a potential obstacle to the future of China’s aviation industry.
Yusof, founder of the aviation industry analyst firm Endau Analytics, agrees that with Boeing and Airbus each controlling half of the commercial aircraft market, it will be difficult for COMAC to take the lead in aviation development. The only way to break the current oligopoly is for China to “coerce and influence its state-owned airlines to buy these planes from China Eastern, China Southern and Air China,” according to Yusoff. But China will have to wait at least 10 to 20 years before it finally joins the ranks of the major aviation powers.
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