China's C919 Passenger Jet Wins First Orders

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11764653

A breakthrough first order has been made for 100 Chinese-made jetliners.

Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac) has taken its first orders for the C919 passenger planes from three domestic airlines and General Electric's leasing arm.

The orders are being seen as a vote of confidence in state-owned Comac.

The move may also mark a challenge to the dominance of Boeing and Airbus who have virtual control of the trillion dollar aircraft industry.

Comac expects to sell more than 2,000 C919s over the next 20 years.

Huge market

China is the world's fastest growing major economy and its domestic air travel market is set to expand rapidly over the next decade.

A billion Chinese are predicted to be flying for business and leisure in the near future and China is keen to reduce its reliance on foreign planes.

"The customer signing lays a market foundation for the C919, which has smoothly entered the engineering development phase," Comac chairman Zhang Qingwei said in a statement.

Clearly not a major player yet but no doubt Chinese airlines will soon be buying these planes on diktat. It will be interesting to see what the safety record of these planes will end up being like.

Has this company got developments in place for larger planes?

[Clocker]

[interestrateripoff]

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/11/china-announces-100-commercial-airplane.html

Aircraft, Grains, Empty Crates

Aircraft, grains, and empty crates are among US leading exports to China. With this announcement, you can now safely kiss aircraft goodbye. And if you ever once believed the US was going to quickly double its exports as president Obama proclaimed, you can stop believing that too.

There is nothing inflationary about this announcement. It is guaranteed to cost jobs. Worse yet, more stories like this are coming. We not only exported jobs to China, we also exported technology.

Mish's view on this.

[pilchardthecat]

There are enough people in the world who won't fly on a dodgy chinese aeroplane to make this a non story IMO

(I count myself amongst them)

Can't see BA or Quantas using them any time soon

[LuckyOne]

There are enough people in the world who won't fly on a dodgy chinese aeroplane to make this a non story IMO

(I count myself amongst them)

Can't see BA or Quantas using them any time soon

I used to think the same thing about Embraer. It is not as easy to avoid their aircraft as it was even a decade ago.

[Redcellar]

There are enough people in the world who won't fly on a dodgy chinese aeroplane to make this a non story IMO

(I count myself amongst them)

Can't see BA or Quantas using them any time soon

I bet the seats are for small people?

On the bright side, I would fancy my chances of not having an annoying little brat sitting next to me or kicking the back of my chair all flight, given the chinese 1 kid per family rule.

[ken_ichikawa]

There are enough people in the world who won't fly on a dodgy chinese aeroplane to make this a non story IMO

(I count myself amongst them)

Can't see BA or Quantas using them any time soon

Who says Europeans and the USA will even have money to fly in the future

[ken_ichikawa]

I bet the seats are for small people?

On the bright side, I would fancy my chances of not having an annoying little brat sitting next to me or kicking the back of my chair all flight, given the chinese 1 kid per family rule.

Cathy and Airkorea seats are pretty small because they are designed for Asian people.

[Redcellar]

Cathy and Airkorea seats are pretty small because they are designed for Asian people.

It will never take off in the USA or UK then. Obese nations.

Infact it won't take off for two reasons. Size of seats and lack of engine power for tubby people on the plane.

[pilchardthecat]

Who says Europeans and the USA will even have money to fly in the future

I do.

If we don't, the Chinese damn well won't either. Their mercantilist over-production bubble will splatter all over their faces.

[Live Peasant]

Having sat at Domodedovo and watched some of the old crates flying in from the East, if the Chinese can develop a reliable civil airliner it'll be a big hit.

[montesquieu]

Never read so much nonsense. Flown on plenty of internal Chinese flights and flights to local Asian destinations. Chinese engineering is now among the best in the world. Chinese airports are better organised than our own. China isn't Soviet Russia and these planes will be just as safe as anything coming out of Seattle.

[ken_ichikawa]

Never read so much nonsense. Flown on plenty of internal Chinese flights and flights to local Asian destinations. Chinese engineering is now among the best in the world. Chinese airports are better organised than our own. China isn't Soviet Russia and these planes will be just as safe as anything coming out of Seattle.

You know a lot of these, China is rubbish type posts are starting to sound a lot like what British bikers were saying in the 1970s. Ged my instructor regales me with stories about the 1970s when they were all riding triumph and other assorted British motorbikes. They laughed at how rubbish Japanese bikes were.... curiously he and his fellow instructors won't touch a UK made bike with a barge pole these days. Then the Japanese made a killer (in figurative and metaphorical sense) they came out with bikes like the 6cyl CBX1100 which was a monster. Once they'd picked over the corpse of the British bike industry their bikes were better than our own.

[cashinmattress]

Why does this come as any surprise to anyone?

China pumps out more engineers and technicians a year than does America and Britain combined, by a big margin, and with their huge state capital budget (of US currency holding too), they can adapt and upgrade their education programs far easier than anyone else.

Not quite the same scenario for India, but they are still overtaking us in high tech and manufacturing.

This is the future, in out lifetime, suck it up.

Link

FORTUNE -- Applied Materials had to fly in 100 interviewers just to screen all the job applicants for its new Solar Technology Center in Xi'an, China, last year. The company wanted to fill 260 high-tech jobs. It got 26,000 resumes. A fraction of those applicants were invited to interview. The final selectees, board member Andy Karsner tells me, "were top-of-their-class, English-speaking engineers. They're the best of the best."

Now some of the most advanced research in this high-value, fast-growing field is being done in China -- instead of in the U.S. with American engineers. Why should we care? Because it's graduation season, when we see how starkly the direction of the American educational system differs from the way that faster-growing economies are headed.

Those Chinese solar researchers are the cream of an engineering crop that included an estimated 10,000 Ph.D. graduates last year. This spring the U.S. will graduate about 8,000 Ph.D. engineers, an estimated two-thirds of whom are not U.S. citizens. About 150,000 students who majored in engineering, computer science, information technology, and math will collect bachelor's degrees. The Chinese government claims that in recent years the number in China has been well north of 500,000 and rising fast; even if overstated, as some believe, the real number is much larger than America's, and the quality of those graduates is improving.

Americans should be alarmed, not because we have to beat the Chinese on every statistic, but because those facts threaten the heart of our great economic story. Until the past decade most Americans lived a little better every year. From the nation's beginnings, the engine of that improvement has been technology that makes millions of workers more productive. That's why you learned about Whitney's cotton gin and the McCormick reaper in elementary school. A stagnant living standard has terrible consequences, one of which is that the country eventually stops attracting and keeping the world's best and brightest, triggering a downward spiral that grows ever harder to break.

The spiral may be well under way. Instead of staying in the U.S., our non-U.S. Ph.D. graduates increasingly judge home to be a more attractive option. Anand Pillai, a top talent executive at India's giant HCL Technologies, says that his best young recruits used to insist on being sent to the U.S. for a time, but now many of them resist going: "They see such great opportunities at home."

I know the education here in the UK. Outside of the select few establishments, the output is crap. Kids don't have a chance as they have been coached and put through a profit focussed education system, even for the core vocational degrees. The rest of the courses are pure sh1t, correctly spotted by many on here as a Labour alternative to going on the dole.

Better get your kids learning to speak Mandarin etc,,, and do well in your maths and science courses.

[Luminist]

On a slightly unrelated note, a couple of days ago, China took the supercomputing crown away from the US with a new computer capable of 2.5 petaflops. Not bad for a developing, second world country wouldn't you say?

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/28/chinese-supercomputer

Best,

L

[ken_ichikawa]

On a slightly unrelated note, a couple of days ago, China took the supercomputing crown away from the US with a new computer capable of 2.5 petaflops. Not bad for a developing, second world country wouldn't you say?

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/28/chinese-supercomputer

Best,

L

Posted that on my blog a week ago..

The key difference is this:

China is run by engineers, who's major shareholders (government) want pride and things to show off to the world.

Western nations are run by shareholders who demand their accountants maximise profits no matter what.

[EmpiricalBear]

Posted that on my blog a week ago..

The key difference is this:

China is run by engineers, who's major shareholders (government) want pride and things to show off to the world.

Western nations are run by shareholders who demand their accountants maximise profits no matter what.

I think you've nailed it.

[Si1]

I used to think the same thing about Embraer. It is not as easy to avoid their aircraft as it was even a decade ago.

this new chnese plane is in the 737 / A320 size class, according to the report.

that is quite something if it works

best luck to them frankly

[Protect Rural England]

Not for long as "The One Child Policy" will be repealed in the not to distant future.

Very true

I deal with the Chinese a great deal.

On one occassion a senior executive aged about 35 (who spoke 7 languages fluently - very very bright and shrewd) said, "look - very simple - we don't need to have a war with our neighbours - we walk into where we want to go"

[Si1]

Very true

I deal with the Chinese a great deal.

On one occassion a senior executive aged about 35 (who spoke 7 languages fluently - very very bright and shrewd) said, "look - very simple - we don't need to have a war with our neighbours - we walk into where we want to go"

if i lived in Burma I'd invite them in warmly

[Stay Beautiful]

if i lived in Burma I'd invite them in warmly

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0830/China-warships-dock-in-Burma-rattling-rival-naval-power-India

[Daft Boy]

On a slightly unrelated note, a couple of days ago, China took the supercomputing crown away from the US with a new computer capable of 2.5 petaflops. Not bad for a developing, second world country wouldn't you say?

http://www.wired.co....e-supercomputer

Best,

L

But can it run windows 7 ?

[rxe]

Just as Japan has, the Chinese will build planes, computers, high tech electronics, you name it. At the moment the quality is variable, in the future it will be as good as anywhere in the world.

They need to do this - they have vast domestic markets to serve. I don't think that Airbus and Boeing between them could serve the Chinese market, they couldn't build the planes fast enough.

That said, quality does not come cheap. You don't build a high technology industry such as aviation in sweat shops without having planes falling out of the sky. Chinese planes aren't going to be £10 each, they're going to be comparable to Airbus and Boeing, because the investment required is immense.

In the future, we'll be flying on American, Chinese, Indian and European planes. So will the Chinese and Indians.

The limiting factor here is more the availability of energy to sustain their consumer demand.

[JonoP]

I import various major engineered equipment from Europe, US and Asia. I can tell you that Chinese quality when well selected is far higher than that from England.

Of course, you would not have to import so much if Australia actually had the skills to manufacture anything locally. However, with the exception of some OK'ish laundry airers, the Aussies fail in this respect. Even in in the realm of laundry airers, the ones manufactured in Europe are of far higher quality (I know this as i have just bought one). :-)

[Dave Spart]

Posted that on my blog a week ago..

The key difference is this:

China is run by engineers, who's major shareholders (government) want pride and things to show off to the world.

Western nations are run by shareholders who demand their accountants maximise profits no matter what.

Same is true of Singapore.