"China's new not so stealthy fighter " Topic

Apparently, the new J-20 stealth fighter is only "stealthy" if it only goes slow.

link

The interesting revelation is that the Russians refuse to sell the Chinese their newest jet engines because the Chinese will steal even their "allies" technology. This poi8nts out the major flaw in Chinese culture, they don't think outside the box and are not innovators.

I don't know that it's a cultural flaw so much as a political flaw. These engines must get into service, and heads will roll if they don't (literally). So they're pushed into service before people figure out the trick to making the turbine blades. Give them 10 years, they should have it figured out. But it does take time.

The Chinese aren't stupid, they have a population of 1.2bn people to skim the top 1% for engineers.

However, you are talking about a culture and society where conforming is held in high esteem, if not required. So yes it is a cultural/societial marker.

10 years for the chinese means another 10 years fo the U.S. (and other adversaries). We'll see if there's gonna be any catching up.

Keep in mind that China had no experience in military-grade jet engine design/development until only recently and is trying to leap-frog a field we've been developing and steadily evolving since the age of the turbojet in the 1950's.

They've already shaved off decades of R&D through industrial espionage and reverse-engineering, but as as the "National Interest" article in your link pointed out, certain technical problems can only be overcome through costly and time-consuming trial-and-error experimentation and testing. They will solve the manufacturing issues given more time, Even with good ol' American innovation and know-how we paid that price ourselves.

Don't underestimate the Chinese. They have achieved parity with the west in some areas, such as quantum computing and hypersonic glide vehicles. They have an operational long-range missile, the PL-15, that supposedly "spooked" the air force because it out-sticks anything in our arsenal. Many Chinese scientists and engineers are educated at top American and European universites and trained to think "outside the box." The Chinese have think tanks just like we do.

It would be a mistake to believe that, just because the Chinese have a unitary form of government and exhibit certain traditional cultural traits such as respecting authority, they're not free to innovate and think "outside the box." Some might even regard such beliefs as racist.

+1 28mm.
I have worked full time in China for almost 4 years and very much support your comments. It's lazy thinking and naive to continue using these out of date and simplistic stereotypes of Chinese society, technology and industry.

Western aerospace has plenty of its own examples of badly delayed, poorly performing, or aborted engine developments and of planes having to make do with substitute power.

Now, I will admit that China does have a real cultural problem with Quality Control and Quality Assurance. They've always just measured productivity in terms of total numbers delivered, not total numbers delivered to specifications.

Once they finally grok that, I expect their technology base to skyrocket. It took Japan, what, 20 years to change the definition of "Made in Japan" from "cheap junk" to "top quality".