China imports billions-worth stuff from very small and poor countries
like Ukraine. Let alone Russia, Israel & France.
Chinese can't make a simple 700kgf (17kN) mini-turbofan engine for UCAVs,
they bought license from Ukrain for Ivchenko AL-25TLK engine and build it under
the name WS-11.
They need "help" from Ukraine to make their Y-20 heavy transport ac, which is
primarily designed by Ukraine's Antonov Design Bureau and funded by China. PLAN
wants to buy hovercrafts from Ukraine after indigenous alternatives (a copy
of an older Soviet product) failed.
I can't believe a so-called "superpower" China is so terribly dependent on
poor countries like Ukraine to make their stuff. Don't forget the Chinks still can't
make their own engine for their plane J-10, the WS-10A still doesn't give satisfactory
performance even after 25 years in development. They're premier "stealth fighter"
J-20 cannot even fly without Russian engines. And they think they're ahead of
Russia in fighter development...
That WZ-10 helicopter they were pondering over since the last two-and-a-half
decades still has overweight problems, and they need help from Western companies
like Pratt & Whitney to convert a civilian engine into a military-optimized one!
Funny thing is how reliable is a civilian engine in a battlefield?? And even more
funny is, the Chinese need Westerners' help to compete with the West itself !!
They're AWACS project KJ-200 Balance Beam is a Chinese radar mounted on
the Y-8J propeller aircraft (a copy of Soviets' old Antonov An-12). Now the Chinese
expertise in modifying an airframe is so less than they had to take this plane
to Ukraine to let the Antonov OKB scientists take a look at the airframe and tell
China what to do and how to do concering the mounting of an AEW radar on top.
That is enough to prove that Chinese mass-produce
a product by looking at it/taking it apart that's all. They do not know about it's
designs, and source codes for software that helped design then, for that they need
to take the plane right back to where it came from (in this case, Antonov OKB, now
in Ukraine). By "copying" the Chinese simply make a replica of an existing product,
they know sh!t about it. Which is absolutely
no different than the license-
production that India does. They only difference is that Chinese produce the
product under a Chinese name, for the
sake of making they're worthless
mark on it. While India builds it under the original name only.
the Shenyang J-11/Sukhoi Su-27 is just a perfect example. If India were to
produce MKI under the name HF-26 and Dassault Rafale under the name HF-28,
India, according to the Chinese sphere of knowledge, literally "makes" it. I'll
leave it to god to make people understand that in the right way. However that
doesn't make the Flanker a Chinese or Indian product, it's origin is distinctly Russian,
regardless of whatever new loads of stuff you add to it and give it more worthless
names J-11B, J-11BS, Chinese plane blah blah blah, Shenyang made it blah blah
blah...and then some more blah blah blah