China Should Start Pirating Boeings

[Matsuda]

The Chinese are Now Knocking Off the US’ Airplanes

China has big plans for planes. As recently reported in a Fortunecover story, its state-owned aviation plants are pouring billions of dollars into a determined effort to break their dependency on the West. Working on a timeline that astounds business analysts, China is charging hard to produce their version of best-selling jetliners like Boeing's 737 and Airbus's A320 by 2014. Their goal is noble, and the art of slinging a behemoth piece of metal filled with people into the sky is an Olympian task. But China's triumph, when finally realized, will perhaps be less Herculean, and more like Hally Porter.

That last line probably made J.K. Rowling's lawyers see red, because China ripped the Harry Potter series off like a Hogwarts prom dress, and all thoseHally Porter bootlegs (as his name has often been charmingly and intentionally misspelled) reveal an alternate universe of business ethics. For those in China who don't hold patents, bootlegging is largely a crime of spelling. We laugh at Hike sneakers, and people who watch Break So Bad on their iPed. But is it a laugh at 30,000 feet, when you're flying in a Boning 747?

China started bootlegging planes in the 1990s, as part of a military escalation inspired by Desert Storm. After watching the U.S. Army's firmament-melting war machine hammer Iraq into sand, the Chinese decided to get their military act together. Part of that meant putting U.S. stuff together. At the time, the world had one stealth jet model: the American F-117 Nighthawk. During NATO bombing runs over Serbia in 1999, bad weather and blind chance let a Hail Mary missile snatch one from the sky.

When flaming pieces of the mythical "invisible plane" fell to earth, proud peasants hauled car-sized chunks of shattered imperialism back to their farm. In lands far away, an obscure opportunity was grasped, and Chinese spies materialized in the Balkans. They tracked down pieces of the fallen, mythical plane from farm to farm. Dispensing lump sums for lumps of F-117 Nighthawk, they harvested the crashed American craft, shipping what remained to the land of Hally Porter.

The Chinese labored for more than a decade to bootleg the F-117 Nighthawk. What remains indisputable today is that China's Chengdu J-20 is one of only three other stealth jet models on Planet Earth. And it, uh, kind of looks like the F-117.

The Russians have the other stealth jet. China managed to rip them off, too, in part because 1996 was not a great time for The Bear. Buckled by the collapse of communism and strapped to pay the rent, it made a terrible deal with China, which paid poor Russia $2.5 billion for a license to assemble the premier Russian fighter jet, the SU-27. Blatant theft followed. "When the license was sold, everyone knew they would do this," said Vassily Kashin, a Russian expert on the Chinese military, in The Wall Street Journal. "It was just a risk that was taken. At that time it was a question of survival."

Russia survived and China built about 100 planes before halting production. They told the Russians their plane had become irrelevant. Maybe that's because China had refabricated every single aspect of the SU-27. Three years later, a practically identical plane was produced in China. Russians probably think of it as the "F.U.-27" In the global market, the Chinese regularly undercut Russian models by $10 million - with planes copied from Russia.

That's good news for bargain hunters like Egypt and Pakistan, but Third World jet shoppers should watch out, because a trail of broken parts litter runways from Burma to Zimbabwe. The model in question is the MA-60, reverse engineered from Russian military jets. It is China's first commercial plane to hit the international market. The reason these jets didn't hit China's domestic market is because they kept hitting the ground, very hard, with Chinese people in them. So many MA-60s malfunctioned that Chinese airlines ran away from the things. Left with a batch of reverse engineered death traps on their hands, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China decided to hustle. It tossed MA-60 planes to dear friends throughout the Third World.

When Air Zimbabwe bought two, China threw in a third. Deeply discounted, or sold with very low interest rates, MA-60s were bundled in as part of political-favor packages. One was even given as a gift to the King of Tonga, with full ceremony, in 2009. By that time, the rep of the MA-60 was so bad that New Zealand suspended tourism aid to the tiny country. The literal breaking point for China's commercial aviation vanguard model came on this past June 10. The day started with an MA-60 snapping in half while landing in Indonesia. Later in Burma, another persnickety MA-60 skidded off the runway. Nobody died in either crash, but Burma subsequently grounded all its MA-60s. When your safety record is too scary for the Burmese, you have problems.

These aren't problems China isn't desperately trying to fix. This summer, I was in a bar in Bangkok, drinking with a jet plane pilot. Let's call him Michael. An American stationed in Asia, Michael regularly flies sheiks, CEOs, and other players from the vast wealth throughout the region. He has been places and has stories. One happened a year back, when he was paid to fly a metallurgist from Singapore through the night, toward destinations unnamed. They landed in darkness at the hugest hangar Michael had ever seen. Inside were eight planes. They were green - the metal looks like that on unpainted jets, bought factory fresh from Boeing. Four of these planes were intact, but the rest were meticulously dismantled into a universe of pieces spread in vast spirals that disappeared into the distant immensity of the hangar.

The imported Singaporean metallurgist jumped out to join the Chinese engineers busily bootlegging away. Armed with protractors, rulers, clipboards, and smartphones, this minor army of reverse-engineering geniuses was measuring the dissected planes, right down to the length and thickness of screws. The metallurgist had been flown in to break down the metallic compounds, helping to build what, one day, might be that Boning 747.

There's not much to do about all of this. Bootlegging is just China's way, in what is increasingly their world. And in all fairness, Chinese planes aren't the only ones falling apart - 2013 has been a nightmare year for Boeing's much hyped Dreamliner jet. It began in January when the entire fleet was grounded, due to continual technical problems. Boeing eventually fixed those, but some bugs won't die. In July, a Dreamliner sold to an Ethiopian airline burst into flames at Heathrow airport, forcing both runways to be shut down. More recently, two Dreamliner flights from Japan had to turn around mid-flight due to malfunctions, while another malfunctioning Norwegian airlines model was grounded in Thailand.

So let's hope China rips off the right stuff.





Source

[dMog]

well "made in china" has a bad rep..i have been to places where they use made in china exclusively because of an american embargo...brand new right of the ship products are so defective they need over hauling to make them reliable...i would NEVER get on an airplane that was made in china...... also, I work in canada and have seen steel girders and pipe show up to work sites anywhere from 4 inches to just under a foot short of specs ordered...and also out of round for pipe and girders that are not straight

[CODYQX4]

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Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4

[Turk]

Last thing you want is China's cheap slave labor shit up in the air, hope nobody is dumb enough to buy them.

Couple of heavily biased friends.. I am sick of being ripped off by Auspost or USPS. Chinapost ships same for just a fraction e.g. 1/10. They all post the envelope one for $100, one for $2, same job.

Same bitch with different price tag in different places, cities, and countries. same quality, same service, same flesh!! in an analogy. Likewise, Arguably, best cars are made in Germany, but still probably Toyoto is # 1 selling car in the US, Germany, and in the world. So all is kind of only a benchmark difference not noticeable by the end users.

From the eco/politics and cultural perspective:

Within 50 years world will be dominated by the biggest Capitalist (not Communist) Country, China. All should be prepared themselves and digest this truth.

According to Chomsky, "World should be De-Americanised first. There would/should not be 1st world countries, 3rd world countries. BTW, who are 2nd world countries! Far East, Middle East, East Europe, Communist China (it is the biggest capitalist country) all these terminology for a purpose"!!!

Edited December 4, 2013 by Turk

[Zigen]

All of you complaining about China but still buying their stuff!! :lol:

[janedoe]

All of you complaining about China but still buying their stuff!! :lol:

That's precisely what I wanted to say as well. I don't see people complaining about their favorite gadgets being made there, even though the cheap slave labor clearly helped reduce prices for them and increase profits for the companies. Seriously, how many truly care about the dead Foxconn workers when they're salivating over their latest iToy or XBox One or PS4, or about the sweatshop workers when they put on their T-shirts or Nike shoes and so on? There's a reason America manufactures almost nothing of note now - capitalism and profit. As for badly made extremely cheap products, you get what you pay for.

Eventually everyone desires to move up the food chain. Just as Americans refuse to do low-paying jobs that are now almost exclusively reserved for illegal aliens or foreigners, similarly one day the Chinese will start demanding higher wages that will lead to increased prosperity for them. Of course their system of governance ensures that this will happen slower than in a democracy because protest will be stifled, but it cannot remain that way forever and a social revolution is bound to occur. Concomitantly higher quality standards (and perhaps originality of design as well) will start gaining importance as they look to improve their image as a nation and move away from just being perceived as makers of cheap low-grade knock-offs. Inevitably there will come a tipping point where it will no longer be cost-effective for companies to outsource manufacturing to China, at which point the next low-cost destination with dirt-cheap prices will have to be found, where the same story will play out over time.

Edited December 4, 2013 by janedoe

[flitox]

you don't say cheap slaves but good workers who finally have started to understand capitalism......

[bgood]

could do with some GENUINE "made in china" ?

yellow dog shops manufacturing goods in the US

stamped and labled "made in china"

from injection molds to machine parts

undocumented no support no tansport cost no import tax no wait..nothing..just shows up for purchase

[rancid]

Designed in California, Assembled in China ???? :P :P :P :P :P

[dMog]

Designed in California, Assembled in China ???? :P :P :P :P :P

sounds like anything apple

[calguyhunk]

Between China and Taipei, they make virtually everything these days. And everything that goes into everything and everyone knows that that's not an overstatement. They make every gadget, and every circuit board, capacitor, resistor, modulator, transistor and virtually everything that goes into them.

They make the good ones, the middling ones and the bad ones. You need to know which ones to buy. If you know your stuff, you get can the right stuff at the right prices. If you don't however, you end up getting ripped off either in terms of quality or pricing or both. They fool you once, shame on them. You get fooled twice by the mighty Chinese - shame on you. :yes:

Edited December 5, 2013 by calguyhunk

[Chancer]

Remember when the Russians copied the Concorde? It crashed at an air show.

Let's hope the same doesn't happen here.

[dMog]

Between China and Taipei, they make virtually everything these days. And everything that goes into everything and everyone knows that that's not an overstatement. They make every gadget, and every circuit board, capacitor, resistor, modulator, transistor and virtually everything that goes into them.

They make the good ones, the middling ones and the bad ones. You need to know which ones to buy. If you know your stuff, you get can the right stuff at the right prices. If you don't however, you end up getting ripped off either in terms of quality or pricing or both. They fool you once, shame on them. You get fooled twice by the mighty Chinese - shame on you. :yes:

quality control IS an issue with the made in china ...at least asa country they know they need to address this