China's nascent jet industry has Boeing, Airbus in its sights

HUGE MARKET IS AT STAKE Any chance of payoff is many years away

BEIJING -- Along with plans to put a man on the moon and develop its own aircraft carrier, China's sky-high ambition now includes building its own Made-in-China jumbo jet, to one day compete with Boeing and Airbus for a share of the lucrative commercial aviation marketplace.

The project, still in the early development stages, calls for the first Chinese jumbo jet, dubbed the C919, to make its maiden flight in 2014, with the first commercial delivery two years after that. The jet is being produced by the Shanghai-based Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), which is manufacturing smaller regional jets due to hit the market next year.

China's reasons for wanting to enter the large jet market are clear; Chinese airlines are set to buy more than 2,000 big jets by 2025, making it one of the world's largest markets. Asia's airlines in total are expected to place orders for about 10,000 jets in that same period.

But China's move into the large jet business represents a bold leap -- some say too bold -- with any chance of a payoff many years off. The technology is rapidly evolving, Boeing and Airbus have long-established track records and safety-minded consumers may be wary to switch to a jet made in China.

"I tend to be a little bit skeptical that this can happen a decade or decades away," said Nicholas R. Lardy, a China expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Still, Chinese officials think that they have found a niche to compete with aviation's two big players. The C919 will be a single-aisle jet with 150 to 190 seats, while the other plane makers are concentrating on wide-body jumbo jets. Their jet will be cheaper, they say, and also more environmentally friendly.

Chinese officials said they hope developing a commercial aircraft industry will spur other areas of the economy, including research and development, electronics and the steel industry.

But beyond sheer economics, there is also the matter of prestige. China's Communist Party leaders have long favored grandiose projects, partly as a way of engendering national pride -- and by extension, support for the government. And they have been willing to invest considerable state capital to realize their ambitions.

Premier Wen Jiabao laid out China's jet vision in a May speech titled "Let The Large Aircraft of China Fly in the Blue Sky." He said, "We must succeed in doing this, and the dream of many generations will come true."

China's start-up work is well underway.

In April, just before Wen's speech, COMAC recruited 200 graduates from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, boosting the firm's workforce to 5,000; the plan is for a workforce of 20,000.

And last month, a car-size mockup of the C919 was on display at the Hong Kong air show, putting China's aviation ambition on full display in a prominent position next to Boeing and Airbus at Asia's largest and most prestigious aviation exhibition.