Why jet engines aren't made in China

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• Hacker News
• ..Yet.
  by CrzyLngPwd
• another reason why China can't build jet engines: the jet engine manufacturers never relocated their manufacturing to China, which therefore prevented the Chinese from getting their hands on their IP.

  it's well known that the way China dominated in solar panels was by "transferring" (aka stealing) the IP from US solar panel makers who had foolishly set up shop in China to reduce costs, and ended up going out of business once Chinese companies got the IP and was able to use their resources or gov subsidies to undercut on price.

  I'm not saying that this is always been the reason for China's ability to quickly catch up but it is definitely a factor. Anyone who has worked in China (as I did for a number of years) knows that IP is not safe there (it's not just foreign companies who experience this, Chinese companies find their IP copied by other Chinese companies), and the courts provide almost no help to foreign companies (this may have changed as of 2017, when I left China, up until that point no foreign company had won a significant court case against a Chinese company in a Chinese court).

  by insane_dreamer
• Chinese solar technology is multiple generations ahead of US companies. First solar panels have a conversion rate of 17% while longi is 24.8% and demonstrating 26%. First solar should be out of the market without US government subsidies and protectionism.
  by russli1993
• wow, this was a fantastic, fascinating read
  by keeganpoppen
• Meta. Horizontal/vertical integration/scaling. Terms used throughout the article.

  I hate these terms. They always seem so meaningless. Normally those kind of terms grow out of some kind of useful analogy that helps you picture what they mean. I don't find that at all. MBA speak

  by jimnotgym
• ... They are making Jet engines. Lots of them.

  This article is full of laymen's inaccuracy that indicates the author is not anywhere close to the depth of the field.

  > China’s first fifth-generation fighter, the Chengdu J-20B, relied on a thirty-year old Russian AL-31 for a full decade until its domestic WS-15 program, which was started in the 1990s, was deemed ready for production.

  There is no J-20B J-20 has been using WS-10C for at least 3-5 years

  > China has excelled in industries with legible technological targets, well-known manufacturing processes, and fast iteration cycles.

  I cannot believe people still think an advancing manufacturing economy just stops at certain threshold. That's plainly illogical.

  Jet engine has legible technology targets. Well-known manufacturing processes. Not-so-fast-in-common-sense iteration cycles.

  If I am poor, of cuz I am not have time to make a beautiful suit for myself. I need to first make the house, a shabby one as well. Until one day I started make the suit. That has nothing to do with the suit being less clear targets, processes, or whatever.

  > Additionally, there was existing synergy China could exploit. Chinese EV success was predicated on earlier successes in battery manufacturing.

  Yes, of cuz, battery manufacturing was considered beyond China's capability before ...

  by bigcat12345678
• > When it takes months to determine whether a single change has produced a positive impact, directional intuition is critical to faster development, and that lives entirely as tacit knowledge amongst generations of aerospace, materials, and mechanical engineers.

  ... and implied by that is that no one who holds that knowledge is going to be braindead enough and go and help China to destroy their industry just like they did with everyone else.

  by mschuster91
• the one thing that this article leaves out is very obvious and simple: culture

  when you don't have an environment where truthful valid opinions or facts are allowed to freely be tested and communicated you simply can't build anything complex that requires strong individual integrity and honesty.

  jets aren't the only stuff that China cannot make. Semiconductors are also a great example.

  by zuzululu
• China has an incredible engineering culture. If you think their meteoric rise is accomplished without being able to share opinions or facts you’re very much mistaken.

  To imply they lack “individual integrity and honesty” is misinformed, deluded, and likely racist.

  by JSR_FDED
• This, like the linked article by the same author ("America Doesn't Have the Stomach for Growth") raises a few interesting points but doesn't have a strong central thesis. If I could summarize this article, the main thrusts are 1) it's too technically complex, 2) the margins are thin, 3) there are strong regulatory requirements, and 4) opportunity cost vs. AI and chips. Anyone that knows Chinese modern manufacturing knows that is an incredibly weak argument overall.

  On technical complexity, China _has_ a more technically complex engine, totally domestic! The WS-15 is a _more_ difficult engine to make. It runs hotter, has an afterburner and variable nozzle... and it is made virtually entirely domestically; yes, including the turbine blades that the author wastes two pages reassuring you only the West can make.

  On thin margins... this is laughable. The CCP loves to subsidize strategically industries in six million ways and it is _really_ good at it. Way better than any Western government. Talk about efficient use of gov't money, the CCP will get you high quality engineers, raw materials, a captive market, whatever you need. Negative margins do not bother them one iota.

  On strong regulatory requirements... China has a massive domestic market, a physically large country and several strong allies / client states. International requirements are irrelevant to start and once they have proven performance in their markets they can get them anyway.

  On opportunity costs... this is the least weak of the arguments. I would argue that 1) China has enough top talent to go around, 2) even in a post-AI world jet engines are useful, and 3) it's clearly a priority of Xi Jinping and thus this whole discussion is irrelevant. That said, there is something to this argument and I would be interested to read a political/strategic analysis on this topic.

  Overall, this and Aakash's other articles seem like starting with a conclusion then grasping at random factoids to defend it. If I might give advice to the author: try writing with a strong central thesis.

  by owenversteeg
• The WS-15 is impressive, but it’s on a par with the jet engine technology available to the US military in ~2005. No-one doubts that China can make functioning jet engines. The question is how long the West can maintain the technical lead that it still does have.
  by foldr
• If they can build rocket engines they can build jet engines.
  by amelius
• Jet engines are significantly more complex. You don’t know whah you are talking about.
  by null_shift
• Probably the most head in the sand mil-tech article I've read in long time. There are very few explicit claims the author makes about Chinese capability that can be addressed, most of it just gesturing at anecdotes or vibes.

  The author does not notice that the F-35 is a single engine jet rated for VSTOL flight characteristics. The F135 is required to produce that much thrust by itself to support that profile. The J-20 is a twin-engine fighter. Why, pray tell, does the engine designed for a twin engine, land based fighter designed for carrying large payloads of air to air munitions need to beat the thrust of the F135? The comparison is worse than stupid.

  The Chinese Flanker fleet is being built out and maintained at scale with WS-10s, it's industries churn out 100-120 J-20s per year, all with twin WS-15s. This is a mature jet engine capability, at massive scale. "Not made in China"???

  The author makes a passing comment that the WS-15 is "outdated" compared to NATO forces. They are clearly blissfully unaware that the F-18 Super Hornet standard runs the F414 powerplant, as old as the WS-15, itself an upgrade on the F404 powerplant, 50 years old now. The F-18F is the USN's mainline pacific theatre fighter.

  I honestly believe anyone who considers the Chinese jet engine program to have been a failure to have perhaps lost some marbles along the way. It demonstrably is not, unless you think the PLAAF is about to collapse midair, a notion their daily ADIZ violations and interceptions over the SCS and the Taiwan straits should thoroughly disabuse. My prediction is by 2037 the entirety of Chinese domestic civil aviation will be running the C919 and they'll be a serious competitive threat to Airbus and Boeing.

  by IndeanCondor
• Counterpoint: modern fighters need higher-performance engines not just for thrust but also to run and cool more and more electronics. Arguably both are underpowered from where they need to be.
  by pohl
• this interview also talked a bit about the reasons its hard for get turbines to be manufactured in China, but coming at it from the gas power generation side. https://www.decouple.media/p/the-gas-turbine-the-final-revel...
  by totetsu
• I know it's not the point of the article but wow I learned a lot about metallurgy and kind of fell down a rabbit hole. Great stuff
  by kaizenite
• I think we all know why nobody risks that. It's because of a terrible quality. But saying so is somehow "holy wars". It is not.
  by Giorgi
• meta: isn't there a long history of such retrospective analysis where when a country does well economically, it's due to something in their culture?
  by dilawar
• Minor nitpick: Rolls-Royce military jet engines are made at Bristol (ex-Bristol Aerospace), but civilian turbines like the Trent series are made in Derby.
  by pixelesque
• There are 200 Chinese industrial engineers, 8 Chinese bankers, and 1 Goldman Sachs disciple of Hank Paulson, reading this right now thinking of ways to chip away at sentence in this paper.
  by killjoywashere
• The framing here is sensationalist.

  Going from near zero 40 years ago to being just 10 years behind the state of the art now is actually pretty rapid convergence. Calling that a "failure" is strange.

  by DiogenesKynikos
• > Each of these companies relies on a deep network of suppliers

  Isn’t this by design? ie each country customer has an important stage in the supply chain so that if the primary country fails to deliver, a supply countries can choke global orders

  by alfiedotwtf
• I think part of it comes down to trust. GE can trust that metal alloy from its supplier will not be substituted, etc. They still have to manage quality but they don't have to vertically integrate just to get the level of quality they need.
  by projektfu
• A key question in assessing China’s development of indigenous turbofan engines for commercial aviation is the addressable market.

  In the near term, it is highly unlikely that Chinese-made engines would be adopted by Boeing or Airbus, given certification barriers, supply chain integration challenges, and broader geopolitical considerations. As a result, the primary initial market would be China’s domestic commercial aircraft programs.

  However, the scale and timing of that demand remain uncertain. Early production volumes for programs such as the C919 are relatively limited, and initial fleet sizes alone may not be sufficient to amortize the substantial research and development costs associated with modern turbofan engines. This raises questions about the commercial viability of such programs in the absence of broader international adoption.

  China’s civil aviation industry is still in a relatively early stage of development. The C919, its first domestically developed narrow-body jet, has completed test flights and entered initial service with Chinese airlines. At present, it relies on engines supplied by GE. A critical milestone for the program is obtaining international airworthiness certification, particularly from U.S. and European regulators, which would enable broader global operations and improve export prospects.

  If such certifications are achieved, potential demand may emerge from developing markets, including Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. Nevertheless, penetration into North American and European airline fleets would likely remain limited for the foreseeable future, even if existing Western-supplied engines continue to be used.

  Recent export control measures—such as U.S. restrictions on the sale of certain engine technologies—highlight the extent to which geopolitical factors can influence supply chains in the aerospace sector. These constraints have, at times, affected delivery schedules for aircraft programs like the C919.

  In this context, China’s push to develop indigenous engine capabilities can be understood as a strategic response to external dependencies. Similar dynamics have been observed in other high-technology sectors, including semiconductors and advanced computing hardware, where supply chain resilience and technological self-sufficiency have become increasingly important policy objectives.

  by satonakamoto
• For as long as the article is, surprised that it neglected to mention that the WS-10 started as an unlicensed copy of the CFM-56.
  by coredog64
• Very informative but there's some key potentialities left unexplored. For example what if a simpler jet engine could be produced based on a future electric battery powered plane. After all the article emphasizes that China exploited the simplification of a new market in the waning internal combustion engine era
  by redwood
• This may be a stupid question - but can't China just buy some airbus/boeing planes, take the engine apart and then manufacture each part as is?
  by khurs
• Chinese firms already manufacture parts of Rolls Royce engine. I think Wuxi Turbine is one example
  by eunos
• No. They do this of course, but with jet turbines the materials science and processes aren't deducible from the work product.
  by 15155