Why jet engines aren't made in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#51

Post by eth0up » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #46

eth0up wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is that they produce a lot of engineers, while the US produces a lot gender studies majors. I rarely say it, but I do not foresee much that they won't be leaving us sharply behind on soon, other than poverty and homelessness, which we have pretty well covered.

There are about as many gender study majors in the U.S. per year as there are aviation engineering majors. That is one small niche of engineering majors that includes all of gender study.

I guess I can relax and stop worrying that we're falling behind a bit. But I do wonder what the numbers really are, and just how many engineers we produce compared to China, of course, without qualifying everyone that learned Visual Basic as an engineer, unless, of course, that's where they're actually getting their own numbers from.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#52

Post by 8note » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 1:34 AM UTC

TFNA wrote: post #28

dmitrygr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

You fell for a meme that was tired years ago already (your link is from 2017, after all). The article itself notes, “Relatively low-value items, like ballpoint pens, have not been a priority”, so obviously this says little about higher-priority military and industrial areas to which the CCP devotes greater effort.

is it really a tired meme?

its a clear prioritzation choice from the government, and that prioritization is itself a technology

notably this same prioritization mode resulted in the soviet union failing to produce quality of life improvements for its citizens.

the failure is that the CCP is unable to prioritize making simple useful stuff

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#53

Post by stogot » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24

ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

Material engineering is the well known blocker for China, same with semiconductors. They basically have to replicate 50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west. China hasn’t mastered chips either yet in the same way it hasn’t mastered jet turbines: they can do cheap (high yields, low maintenance costs per hour of use), they can do high performance, they can’t do both yet at the same t…

“ well kept under lock in key in the west”

You’re joking. These have been put on network drives since early 2000s and CCP has hacked and exfil them

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#54

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #49

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material engineering is the well known blocker for China, same with semiconductors. They basically have to replicate 50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west. China hasn’t mastered chips either yet in the same way it hasn’t mastered jet turbines: they can do cheap (high yields, low maintenance costs per hour of use), they can do high performance, they can’t do both yet at the same t…

>"50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west." Bollocks. Russia does that as well, single crystal turbine blades in particular so the west is not the sole gatekeeper here. Given the circumstances Russia might as well share the tech for some things in return

Does Russia do it at comparable yield at the same quality level? India can do single crystal turbine blades too, but at a small scale.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#55

Post by Grombobulous » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

SecretDreams wrote: post #19

Grombobulous wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I even thought that the example of automobiles proved the jet engine analogy wrong. Sure, automobiles aren’t as complex as a jet engine, but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants. Something like 10 years ago we were laughing at videos of Chinese cars spectacularly failing crash tests, and now China is selling to very heavily regulated markets. Same deal with things like high speed rail.

> but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants. I'm not sure China is known for their ICE designs. Like Korea, I suspect China partially pushed hard for EV specifically because the complexity in a battery + motor system is meaningfully simpler than the ICE equivalent and there's relatively little overlap in many facets outside of some first principles. Jet engines are like ICE, but with a ve…

The Jaecoo 7 is the #3 top selling car in the UK right now and it has an ICE powertrain.

Low reliability and safety issues kills car brands. Consumers really don’t like it.

Sure, jet engines are on a very different level of reliability standards, but it seems to me that the concepts are all the same: highly regulated market of low-margin complex heavy machinery where it’s difficult to be a new entrant in the market.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#56

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #37

toast0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese automakers do (or did) make ICE and hybrid cars, too. I suspect it's wouldn't have been good strategy to try to build those cars for the US, CA or EU markets. An ICE engine is relatively straightforward, but hitting emissions and fuel efficiency targets is complex. [1] And the future of ICE cars, especially in those markets, is limited... why build out emissions expertise, when you can get your foot in the do…

Chinese automakers do (or did) make ICE and hybrid cars, too. Mainly copies of Japanese and US designs.

[deleted]

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#57

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #37

toast0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese automakers do (or did) make ICE and hybrid cars, too. I suspect it's wouldn't have been good strategy to try to build those cars for the US, CA or EU markets. An ICE engine is relatively straightforward, but hitting emissions and fuel efficiency targets is complex. [1] And the future of ICE cars, especially in those markets, is limited... why build out emissions expertise, when you can get your foot in the do…

Chinese automakers do (or did) make ICE and hybrid cars, too. Mainly copies of Japanese and US designs.

[deleted]

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#58

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #22

Grombobulous wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I even thought that the example of automobiles proved the jet engine analogy wrong. Sure, automobiles aren’t as complex as a jet engine, but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants. Something like 10 years ago we were laughing at videos of Chinese cars spectacularly failing crash tests, and now China is selling to very heavily regulated markets. Same deal with things like high speed rail.

High speed rail technology is not a secret. We in the US just don’t have the will. Auto technology in China was acquired via tech transfers. In order to open mfg in China foreign concerns were forced into partnerships with local companies; moreover there was an effort to obtain foreign trade secrets. Metallurgy for jet fans isn’t one of the technologies the west has tried to partner with China. At this time the UK, t…

[deleted]

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#59

Post by NitpickLawyer » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #3

ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

It's not even that. You can have all the designs you need, but you also need a bunch of downstream tech to get from drawings to production. This is something that centrally planned economies struggle with. You can't 5-year-plan your way to jet-engines if you haven't previously 5-year-planned for all the auxiliary infrastructure needed to support that.

We already know this was an issue with the soviets, back when they had the plans for us jet engines (for fighter planes), but couldn't replicate them. Same for stealth, hell even some of their rocketry. And the soviets had plenty of auxiliary systems already in place, during the cold war. As someone said above, they could do quantity, they could do limited high-quality, but couldn't do both at the same time.

There are things that work with 5-year plans: railroads, road infra, buildings, etc. And there are things that are not that easy, and take multiple decades from when the order comes to having it realised. Something that's not immediately obvious for western folks is that when you mix central planning with authoritarian governments, you will get a huge number of pain points along the way, where orders come downwards towards the ones executing them, and overreporting/missrepresentations/lies go upwards. It's like the longest game of telephone, where you start from the top, demanding x y z, get reports that you're on your way of getting 3x, 3y, 3z and in reality you have some of x, none of y, and z looks like z but it's actually three x's in a trench coat.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#60

Post by cameldrv » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 2:13 AM UTC

There is a lot of black art stuff in jet engine manufacturing, but if this article is supposed to be reassuring to Americans, it's not to me. They're saying that China was 21 years behind on the previous generation of engines, and they're going to be 7 years behind on the next one. That sounds like they're catching up pretty fast.

I don't know where they're at in terms of civil engines, but each new generation of engines eeks out less and less additional performance. If China comes out with something like the CFM LEAP at a good price, I'd imagine they could sell that for many years to come.