High point for Airbus: why China is buying European airliners
China has decided to seriously upgrade its civil aviation fleet. Beijing is considering ordering hundreds of civilian Airbus aircraft of different models. This may indicate a certain strengthening of economic ties between China and the European Union against the background of an acute conflict with the United States. At the same time, China's attempts to break the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus in the civil aircraft market have so far been very modest successes. The article in Izvestia explains why China, which has achieved success in many industries, cannot yet compete in commercial aviation.
Trade war and disasters
Agreements on the sale of aircraft (from 200 to 500, the list includes both narrow-body and wide-body models) have not yet been finalized, but experts believe the likelihood of a contract is quite high. Airbus is generally feeling more and more confident in the Chinese market, which, among other things, was facilitated by the construction of an assembly line for the A320 in Tianjin. On the contrary, Airbus' main competitor, the American Boeing, is currently experiencing a lot of problems in China. In April, regulators ordered Chinese airlines to stop purchasing Boeing aircraft, and it was not only about new orders, but also about airliners that were expected to be delivered.
First of all, the reason for the cooling was the smoldering trade war between Beijing and Washington. In this context, the deal will send a pretty obvious signal to Donald Trump. At the same time, Boeing's failures are also caused by its own problems, mainly in the safety of airliners, such as the Boeing 737 Max. The American corporation has had to fight off the numerous scandals that have plagued it recently for more than one year.
Europe is thus seizing the lead in the fight for the Chinese aviation market, one of the largest in the world. In 2021, local airlines carried 440 million passengers, which is the second result after the United States, with a fourfold gap from the third place occupied by Russia. China remains a battleground for the two largest aircraft design companies in the world.
Chips, yes, planes— no
Indeed, the aviation industry looks like one of the few industries where China is not only not a "global factory", but also cannot provide its own national market. This is in stark contrast to, for example, semiconductor manufacturing. Over the past five years, China has been among the leaders in this industry along with other East Asian powers, despite the harsh policy of sanctions from the United States.
The situation is similar in the construction of vehicles and infrastructure. China produces more than half of the tonnage of the global merchant fleet (together with South Korea and Japan, almost 90%). In just a couple of decades, the country has become a monopolist in an area where there has not been a dominant force for a long time. There are also impressive breakthroughs in the automotive industry: more than a third of all cars in the world are produced in China, and this figure is even higher for the electric vehicle sector. BYD has become the best-selling brand in the world among electric cars and surpasses competitors in sales abroad.
In the field of railway transport, the dominance is even more pronounced. For a quarter of a century, China has covered the entire country with a network of high—speed highways, and their length is 48 thousand km higher than in the rest of the world combined. 96% of Chinese cities with a population of more than 500 thousand people have access to these lines. At the same time, China was able to import trains for these railways, although back in the 2000s, almost the entire market belonged to European and South Korean manufacturers. Chinese high—speed trains are the fastest in the world: the average speed on high—speed railway lines in China is about 300 km/h, and a train with a maximum speed of 450 km/h and a cruising speed of 400 km/h is currently being tested. The Chinese are already building high-speed railways in other countries, including Europe (in Serbia, for example).
In the aviation industry, the results are much more modest against this background, although efforts have been made on this front for a very long time. In 1980, the Shanghai Y-10, a replica of the Boeing 707, took to the air for the first time. However, over the next decade, only three copies of this liner were built, after which the program was curtailed. Attempts to copy regional aircraft, such as the Soviet An—24 and the De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, were also moderately successful. There is nothing to remember about the segment of medium-haul aircraft.
The next "projectile approach" happened in the 2010s, when the ARJ-21 (another small regional jet) entered the market. Its sales were also modest — about 100 copies were produced, and the operating experience was not the most impressive. The medium-range narrow-body C919 (an approximate analogue of the Boeing 737 and A320) made its first flight in 2017, and sales began in 2023. The aircraft is heavily dependent on American and Canadian suppliers of parts and components (48 suppliers from the United States versus 14 from China), so now, in light of the trade war, its future fate is rather vague.
Finally, the C929 wide-body airliner, which was particularly hoped for, has not yet taken to the air. Initially, it was a joint Russian-Chinese project, but the sanctions imposed in 2022 put an end to this cooperation. According to industry analysts, the prototype will now be ready no earlier than 2029. In general, according to the most optimistic estimates, it is possible to speak about the formation of the Chinese aviation industry as at least some serious player only in the 2030s.
An old but demanding industry
What went wrong? Aircraft manufacturing is a technologically very complex industry that requires exceptionally highly developed competencies. But this is only part of the answer, as aviation has its own specific criteria. Aircraft production requires both complexity and absolute reliability, which makes the ultimate goal even more elusive.
It is difficult to produce any airline components, but first of all we are talking about engines. Modern engines require, for example, blades made of single crystals, titanium and aluminum alloys that can withstand temperatures of 1,600 degrees for thousands of hours. Such crystals can be grown in China, but not for the mass market. In addition, jewelry precision is required in design, manufacturing, and assembly. Even the most successful designs require many years of testing in order to verify their reliability. And, of course, as in many "old" industries, such skills have "developed historically."
The first fairly reliable jet engines in the 1940s were made only in the UK at Rolls Royce enterprises. Although the Germans were pioneers in jet aviation, their "engines" were much less survivable and stable. The British shared all their technological secrets with their American allies. At the same time, the USSR acquired several Rolls Royce engines, and soon Soviet aircraft designers carried out a complete "reverse engineering", which greatly contributed to the rapid development of Soviet aviation.
The aviation industry has largely operated by trial and error. In the early stages, the tolerance for failure was much higher. Aircraft designers and enterprises of industry leaders could, among other things, gain negative experience and gradually develop. Over time, when security was made absolute, only countries with decades of manufacturing experience and accumulated competencies could compete in the global market. This is exactly how the American-European duopoly developed, which was finally shaped by the acute problems of the domestic aviation industry after the collapse of the USSR.
In this sense, it is interesting to assess the difference with the same high-speed trains, which are also much younger than aviation. First of all, we note that initially their market was relatively small, and it is still much smaller than the aviation one. Secondly, China has made much greater efforts to develop this particular industry — in China, HSR may well replace air transportation. Here, the railway won the competition from aviation, displacing the latter into a very large, but still niche, flights from different parts of the country (Beijing — Guangzhou, Beijing – Urumqi, etc.). It is not surprising that as the HSR was introduced, passenger traffic in civil aviation decreased.
As a result, the civil aircraft industry remained an important, prestigious, but not vital industry for China, which would be worth throwing unlimited resources and efforts at. At the moment, China remains attractive to foreign aircraft manufacturers, and the Airbus purchase deal will be one of the most ambitious redesigns of the aviation market in recent history. For Boeing, this will be another heavy blow that is raining down on the American giant one after another.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
