by A.W. AND C.R.
AIRLINES HAVE remarkably little choice about where to buy their airliners. The global market for big civil aircraft is dominated by two firms: Boeing of America and Airbus of Europe. China has long dreamed of breaking their stranglehold, and will be showing off its latest designs at the Zhuhai Airshow, which starts on November 6th. Many of these, such as the C919 airliner and a new stealth drone, bear more than a passing resemblance to rival models made by American firms. That suggests that the Chinese have found it harder than expected to develop its own aircraft from scratch. And a growing volume of evidence suggests that the Chinese are now resorting to cheating in order to catch up instead.
On October 30th America’s Justice Department announced that it had charged 10 Chinese nationals, including intelligence officers and hackers working under their command, with conspiring to steal aviation technology. According to the indictment, the Chinese suspects worked, over the course of at least five years, to try and steal data and intellectual property from what is widely reported to be CFM International, a partnership between GE Aviation of America and Safran Aircraft Engines of France. These activities, the Justice Department says, took place at the same time as a Chinese state-owned aerospace company was trying to develop a similar engine to CFM’s turbofan. The announcement comes on the heels of another alleged Chinese effort to steal American aviation secrets. On October 10th a Chinese intelligence officer who had been extradited from Belgium was charged with attempting to steal intellectual property related to jet engines.
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