That Would Be The A320 Reverse Engineering Facility, Right?

Monsters and Critics has it today that Airbus will hold 51 per cent of the new assembly plant they'll be building in Tianjin, China. Production will begin in 2009, and it is expected this will dovetail nicely with the large Chinese aircraft project slated for 2018, which will no doubt bear as close a resemblance to the A320 as the new ARJ21 does to the DC9-10.


I opined a while ago that what cash rich China was likely to do to ramp up their technology in this area would be to take an equity stake in a western engine manufacturer. The only one that came to mind was Pratt and Whitney.

However, the ARJ21 will use a CF34-10 coproduced by General Electric and Shenyang Liming, according to the Chinese Embassy, and the -10 is in the same thrust class as the JT15D that powered the DC9.