China currently can't make the high-performance, efficient, long-life jet engines that US & Europe make. The commercial market is heavily cost-sensitive, so they can't compete there currently as a result.
This doesn't matter so much for military purposes: they can easily eat the cost of a higher maintenance and replacement schedule on a smaller number of military jets with fewer hours on them.
This gives them more iteration cycles, speeding their building up of experience.
They're catching up. Industrial espionage will help them along too, but not as much as the experience from engineering their own designs.
This doesn't matter so much for military purposes: they can easily eat the cost of a higher maintenance and replacement schedule on a smaller number of military jets with fewer hours on them.
This gives them more iteration cycles, speeding their building up of experience. They're catching up. Industrial espionage will help them along too, but not as much as the experience from engineering their own designs.