Earlier quoted context omitted.
China has invested into high-speed rail for the same reason that Japan, France and Spain did: the big cities tend to be in the "sweet spot" distance of 250-750 km from one another, which is very comfortable to ride in a high-speed train. Distances over 1000 km are already favorable for passenger jets. Even in today's Western Europe, there just aren't that many really long distance trains (by which I mean something li…
that's the result, not the reason
Why jet engines aren't made in China
151–160 of 342 posts
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ 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
Then where are the jet engines?
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All the money and talent in the world can't replicate real users generating real data that you can use to improve Basically, China excellence in EVs and Solar was driven by the market being new. It's hard (almost impossible?) to outrank an incumbent very entrenched in a big market. You need a paradigm shift (ie: iphone vs nokia) to make the change.
> You need a paradigm shift (ie: iphone vs nokia) to make the change. I imagine the manufacturing breakthrough for high temperature jet turbine blades could be additive manufacturing where you grow the crystalline structure layer by layer instead of casting and carefully nurturing it. Mature markets with few incumbents focus on local maxima and have difficulty to move from one maxima to another, while a new manufactu…
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly this is a good thing. I can endure buggy software but I don’t want to deal with buggy planes. Regulatory pressure is a market force and a useful one too. There’s a huge difference between ship fast and ship right - the latter one requires deep pockets and willingness to commit to ongoing risk. People always say big Pharma and aviation and such are oligopolies, and that’s bad, but they rarely see the capital…
There is an old saying in the engineering world: “Regulations are written in blood.
I know your comment was likely made as a knee jerk reaction to the above comment but I implore the reader to actually consider the process and incentives by which rules and regulations are created and how an assumption of good faith negatively affects the rules and laws we get.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#155Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then where are the jet engines?
Turns out knowledge alone isn't enough. I mean the knowledge of how to build a nuke, a microprocessor, or a rocket that can go to Mars is public information, yet building them remains elusive for a lot of countries.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#158This is also why China has heavily invested in high-speed rail. Even today, many people who are influenced by persistent misinformation and years of criticism toward China continue to question its high-speed rail system, asking why China doesn’t follow the U.S. model of relying on cars and airplanes instead. But China’s limited ability to rapidly scale commercial aviation means it would have to purchase large numbers…
China has invested into high-speed rail for the same reason that Japan, France and Spain did: the big cities tend to be in the "sweet spot" distance of 250-750 km from one another, which is very comfortable to ride in a high-speed train. Distances over 1000 km are already favorable for passenger jets. Even in today's Western Europe, there just aren't that many really long distance trains (by which I mean something li…
The only real reason you would fly this route would be as a connecting flight. But if you just want to travel from Beijing to Shanghai, HSR is the obvious choice. It probably takes less time overall, and it's way more comfortable. You can even order takeout from restaurants along the way, delivered to your seat.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#159The OP is trying to summarize a 1.4Bn country failure to achieve jet engine in: if you do these couple tricks; or because of these two things. If you're a small country, sure, that kind of strategy might make sense. Pick your battles, run the country like a startup (i.e. bet on one or two industries). China's strategy is the opposite of that: just make production costs low across the board (transport, energy, housing…
So yeah their five year plans are indeed often “Invest in science/engineering”, they are an interesting country.