Precisely, too many Pakistan forumer poison by BR.. They shall visit sinodefence forum more to get themselves updated on the latest Chinese military technology and don't always live in the history. China military modernisation is so fast that those old news like China not able to produce capable and reliable turbofan engine shall have shut up.
China military technology has surpass even Russian. I still remember a NTI report talking about Russian went to the latest Military electronic trade show in Beijing to source for the latest component make by Chinese company for PGM and guided weapon.. The Russian claimed they can't find such things in Russia.
Those news of Chinese military equipment of lacking quality and advancement is probably a decade old news which can't fit in the 2011 context. Guys, get yourself updated.
Beast - I appreciate the patriotism and trust in made in China products, but I disagree to some degree with your post above. I have a habit of calling spade a 'spade' so my post doesn't mean any offense or hurt feelings of anyone. It is just the reality.
Do I think China is making great progress across the board in everything, engineering, military, non-military, absolutely. I don't have any doubt in China's growing capabilities (emphasizing on growing).
However, if I was to take Chinese products and call them a direct comparison of its Western counterparts, I don't think the products, capability and the quality is there yet. However, 2000 vs. 2011, there is a VAST growth in quality. Entirely admit that. Eventually, things will get to a point where Chinese products will be a direct competitor (from quality and cost wise) to its Western counterparts but China is still a good few years away.
Comparing to Russia, that's not a good comparison. Here's the reason why. Throughout the technology boom in 80's and 90's, the Russians made a big mistake. The West (especially the U.S.) went towards the microchip and nano technology (new spying equipment, radars, jet engines, engineering products with very long endurance and 'up time' if you will). However, Russia decided to focus on Mainframe centralized technology. Due to which, it couldn't utilize a lot of things that the Western countries could. An example is just the AESA radars. Russian AESA came to the market now. While the West has operational it. They were testing it in conflicts during 1991 and then with Serbia. Another example is AWACS, P8I and others. All these use VERY sensitive small microchip and nano technologies.
Russia has always been knowing to mass produce stuff. China was the same way until about ten years ago. Then they changed and started to work on the micro-chip and nano technologies. Results are obvious in front of others BUT not exactly compared to the U.S., European electronics just yet.
Also remember, these countries have been toying with the technologies since the 70's. China really started to focus on the latest technology in 1990. So, you got people with over 20 years more experience vs. the Chinese industry. That's the reason why anything made in China that goes to the U.S. or to Europe, has their own specs for it. Cell phones, computers, etc, etc. Chinese standards are different and don't match that of American (ANSI: American National Standards Institutes) or the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), and then there is ISO, EN , etc, etc just to name a few in Communications and information interchange field and then there are different mediums and protocols.
So, again, I am all for Chinese products to be 100% quality compatible with the West, but it will take some more time. Another example is, if the FC-20 was to do everything exactly the way F-16 B 52 does, I am more than confident that the PAF would LOVE to go all out on FC-20. But the platform isn't mature yet: aka quality and functionality is still being ironed out. So give it a few more years before jumping the gun about how advance the Chinese equipment is. It is still much better than a LOT of the countries, but not yet rated A yet, if you will. Hope this helps.
