Hacker News Reader

Comment by thisisnico | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you, I've seen articles like this on hacker news for the past 5 years about how China is failing and China is unable to produce what North America is capable of. And the interesting thing is yes, at first they fail. Why should we expect them to get it right the first time? You learn with practice, and mistakes, and testing. I guarantee eventually they will have a functioning aircraft. This is normal process, with a narrative western spin.

View on HN

Why should we expect them to get it right the first time?

This isn't their first time (the ARJ21 was). Will COMAC succeed where Mitsubishi (Japan), Bombardier (Canada), Sukhoi (Russia), and Lockheed (USA) have failed? Maybe. But China's set a deadline of 2025 to have their own homegrown product in service and it's doubtful that specific goal will be met.

The western aerospace industry is hardly betting against China here. I think Airbus was expecting COMAC to be competitive by 2020. Hell, a huge part of the reason that the 737 MAX exists today is that the Boeing CEO thought China was their biggest threat.

Bombardier (Canada) failed because they had produced a better plane, and boeing made efforts to make it impossible to sell in America. So they've teamed up with Airbus to be able to access the market.

They said that about the Japanese. I remember around 1990 sitting as some of my fellow engineers said the same about Hyundai, they'll never be able to build good cars. I took the other end of the bet. That a country with enough resources with commitment to make the engineering and manufacturing cultural changes will eventually succeed.

Change since thing is Hyundai builds decent cars and a lot of other heavy industrial goods. And the United States has regressed because we believe the free market will provide while the third generation post war management class loots everything not nailed down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com