China has clearly refused to accept 50 Boeing aircraft, and the CEO of Boeing has directly spoken out, threatening that China must accept Boeing aircraft. He stated that if Chinese airlines do not accept Boeing aircraft, then Boeing will stop making aircraft for China, and he also expressed a willingness to give China an opportunity.

In addition, the CEO of Boeing will personally lobby U.S. President Trump to resolve this "unfortunate situation." Boeing doesn't have to make such big claims; when Boeing sold arms to Taiwan before, it had already lost the Chinese market.

In past Sino-U.S. trade, China usually made large purchases from the U.S. to balance its huge trade surplus with the U.S., and Boeing was the biggest beneficiary of these large orders. However, as the Sino-U.S. trade war intensified, China has been reducing its procurement of Boeing passenger aircraft, and since 2020, after China sanctioned Boeing subsidiary Boeing Defense for arms sales to Taiwan, the domestic market has basically stopped purchasing Boeing aircraft.

However, due to the vast demand in the domestic aviation market, there are still 130 accumulated Boeing orders, including 42 for Ruili Airlines (36 737s and 6 787s) and 30 for China Southern Airlines. However, this number is far lower than Airbus' delivery volume to China. Data shows that in 2025, Airbus plans to deliver 136 aircraft to China, and in 2026, it plans to deliver 148 aircraft.

According to the company's plan in 2025, Boeing needs to deliver 50 passenger aircraft to China, and at an average price of $200 million per aircraft, this is equivalent to a billion-dollar order. Now that China has rejected 50 orders, although India and Malaysia have clearly expressed their willingness to accept the returned Boeing aircraft, it will be difficult to find buyers to digest these 50 aircraft in the short term.

In fact, since the Indian-born CEO of Boeing took office in 2015, Boeing has repeatedly encountered safety issues. In 2024 alone, multiple models of Boeing aircraft experienced safety incidents. The 737 MAX 9 aircraft were grounded for inspection in the United States and many other places around the world, and tens of thousands of Boeing employees went on strike for a long time. Under this background, Boeing's revenue reached $66.5 billion in 2024, only 66% of the peak of $101.1 billion in 2018. Net losses reached $11.82 billion, second only to the net loss of $11.87 billion in 2020.

Since 2019, Boeing has been continuously losing money for six consecutive years, accumulating losses of $35.685 billion. The massive losses forced Boeing to urgently seek additional sources of funding. And in 2024, after replacing the new CEO, it has become very difficult to change this situation.

It can be foreseen that as China refuses to accept Boeing aircraft, the United States will certainly impose sanctions on the C919. Any part of our C919 can achieve domestic substitution, and the main reason for using imported parts is to obtain foreign airworthiness certificates to better enter overseas markets.

However, we must also pay attention to the fact that although our C919 engines are currently in testing, mass production is still some time away. The C919 uses the foreign-imported LEAP-1C engine. The LEAP-1C engine, a very new and advanced engine produced by the US-French joint venture CFM company, first flew in 2014. Because the C919 uses it, it achieves a 15% reduction in fuel consumption compared to similar aircraft, a 10% reduction in direct seat-kilometer operating costs, and a 50% reduction in carbon emissions.

Now that China has suspended the acceptance of Boeing aircraft, the United States might cut off engine supplies to China, which means our domestically developed CJ-1000A engine for the C919 needs to accelerate production.

The difficulty of China's development of the Changjiang 1000A high-bypass turbofan engine is堪称 "the pearl on the crown of the aviation industry." The challenge lies not only in the technical complexity itself but also in systemic breakthroughs across the entire industrial chain. As a product对标 the international top-of-the-line LEAP engine, the Changjiang 1000A research and development directly targets parameters such as 13 tons of thrust and 0.53 specific fuel consumption. Although this "leapfrog" strategy can quickly narrow the gap, it also means overcoming multiple challenges in areas such as materials, processes, and integration. For example, the turbine blades at the core of the engine need to operate stably at temperatures exceeding 1600°C; early on, due to insufficient nickel-based superalloy technology, China turned to developing titanium-aluminum alloy blades, eventually breaking through material bottlenecks with high-temperature coating technology developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the iteration from titanium alloy to domestically produced carbon fiber composite materials for fan blades took nearly ten years to achieve a balance between weight reduction and efficiency.

The challenges in system integration and validation are equally daunting. A single engine requires efficient coordination among tens of thousands of components, with test phases involving thousands of hours of ground tests and extreme environment simulations. From core engine ignition to whole aircraft test flights, it takes seven years, which gives you an idea of how difficult China's R&D efforts are.

What sets China's domestically produced aircraft engines apart from those of other countries is that even a single screw needs to be domestically sourced. The Changjiang 1000A requires breakthroughs across the entire supply chain, from high-temperature alloy casting to 3D printing of single-crystal blades and CNC machining. Breaking Western technological blockades for components like turbine disks and bearings involves coordinated efforts from thousands of supporting enterprises behind supply chain autonomy.

Currently, the Changjiang 1000A has been installed and flown, which means mass production is just around the corner. It's time for us to speed up. Besides, the order volume for China Commercial Aircraft Corporation's C919 has reached approximately 1500 aircraft; from 2025 to 2029, the annual production capacity for the C909 will stabilize at 50 aircraft, reaching a cumulative output of around 400 aircraft by 2029.

This production rate is really difficult to meet the vast demand of China's aviation market, and our C919 also needs to go overseas. So while we accelerate the development of engines, our production capacity also needs to increase.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7498024579458286115/

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