Is China's power overrated?

Is funny, recently in another thread some were bragging on how "China is a military powerhouse". And that reminded me of an old thread I had taken part in. And after some looking, I found it.

This is rather interesting, looking back on it almost a decade later. And seeing how accurate some of the posts were.

Or in this case specifically, completely and utterly wrong.

Here we are a decade later, And shall we see how accurate some were?

Well, we can start with the J-20. So far, China has only made about 50 of them. And exported none to anybody. Not to Argentina, not to any African nation.

Meanwhile, the US has exported over a hundred F-35 fighters to 14 other nations.

Meanwhile, China has yet to really create an "original" design of anything militarily. And most of what they have copied are still only made in very small numbers, and nobody seems interested in buying them.

 

My experience has been that China doesn't know how to do quality control. It has been seen in everything from their metals to tools and products, buildings, dams, you name it, the quality of anything from China is almost always far less than our standards. We compensate by artificially upping the design requirements. One of the most striking reports that I've seen: They built entire cities with high rises that had to be destroyed because of black mold. Their construction techniques and products are so inferior that everything leaked.

I remember when China announced they were getting in the commercial aircraft business. I have been working around aircraft production for 30 years. No way in hell would I fly on a Chinese-made aircraft.They will certainly have their successes from time to time but I wouldn't trust any of their products.

And when their Three-Gorges Dam fails it is going to kill millions of people.

My personal perception about why this is true is that they are fundamentally a deceptive culture. This goes all the way back even things like the martial arts. A lot of that wasn't about skill, it was about psyching out your opponent. It was about head games and trickery. And I have dealt with the mind games of Chinese college students trying to psych your out before an exam. It is just a part of their culture. Additionally, they don't share information like we do. They look at us and think us fools because we give our secrets away! Here, we call it cooperation.

Oh yes, and on the average, they think we're all stupid.

I will never forget a pair of wire strippers I purchased from some auto parts store, while on the run. The only brand name on them was "China". And guess what they couldn't do BY DESIGN!?!?! They were designed in such as way that they couldn't possibly strip a wire! LOL! I could hardly believe my eyes.

 

It is more than that, but that is a problem as well. It is like they took what many thing Capitalism is all about, which is "make it as cheap as possible", without realizing that people not only want low cost, they want quality to go with the cost.

Which is another big part of the problem.

Their "largest selling" passenger aircraft are literally all copies of other designs. The ARJ21 is just a licensed copy of the MD80. And it still uses GE engines, and American avionics. So all they make is the body, but in 15 years made 66 of them. The only international customers being Congo (they bought 4), and Indonesia (who is supposed to get the first of 35 this year). This is more "Chinese assembled" than "Chinese made", as the design, engines, and avionics come primarily from the US.

They followed that with the C919. Announced in 2008, it was supposed to be delivered in 2014 and is basically a copy of the Boeing 737. In fact, multiple people have been arrested and companies charges with industrial espionage related to the development of this aircraft. Their timeline had it making the maiden flight in 2010 then getting Chinese certification. This was pushed back to 2014, then 2015, then the prototype finally flew in 2017. Grounded in 2018, they still expected to start deliveries in 2020. Then 2021.

Now they are promising delivery in 2022. But at an asking price of $95 million (over double their promised price). Considering the plane they largely copied only costs $99 million, it is no wonder the only companies planning on buying it are all Chinese airlines. Not unlike their "domestically made computer".

Then there is their Xian MA60. A copy of the old An-24 (1957), it has had a few International orders, but none of note. Oh, and as they have never applied for certification in the US or Europe, it will likely only be used in Asia and Africa. There is a "stretched" version called the Xian MA600, the only purchasers have all been in China. And an even bigger MA700 to be delivered later this year.

There is very much a trend here. None of them are really "Chinese designs". They just buy or copy what another company did, and it seems to take them forever to build anything more advanced than WWII era technology. They are building some decent turboprop planes, but what airlines really use turboprop other than commuter airlines? The money is in jets, and there they are really sucking.

And once again, it is because they actually design very little themselves. They just acquire the designs of somebody else, and make no adjustments for the location they put them up in. Hence, some of their spectacular building failures.



Now the Soviets still relied a lot on copying and espionage, but were still able to create some fine things entirely on their own. Of their own design, even if they rarely changed them much once they got them "perfected" in their eye. Japan started copying, but by the 1930's started a real push in all areas of their industry to no longer copy but to create entirely original designs entirely by their own people. Which created such game changing equipment as the A6M Zero fighter.

And for Japan, that continued when the transistor first came out. Originally very expensive, their electronics companies concentrated on making them with as few transistors as possible, which lowered cost but not performance. Then by the 1970's they started to become a real originator company.

But China, they are still stuck in copy mode. And I don't see that ever changing.