China's re-purchase of Boeing airliners may seem like a stopgap measure, but it is actually motivated by deeper considerations. Until the C919 fails to gain a market advantage, China will have to choose between Boeing and Airbus, or leave the market to American and European companies to "share". While this option may slow down the launch of China's autonomous large aircraft, it may be a passive acceptance given China's technological gap with the United States and Europe in this area.
According to the aviation industry information publication The Air Current, the Chinese side generally agreed to continue to import the 737 MAX produced by Boeing. According to the news released by the Civil Aviation News of China, Hu Zhenjiang, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and Fleming, a representative of Boeing, had an in-depth conversation and reached a partial cooperation. It is a stopgap measure for China to continue to introduce Boeing airliners. On the one hand, the safety of the 737 MAX is controversial, and China may be worried that such a move will cause consumer dissatisfaction, after all, no one can afford the consequences of a similar Malaysia Airlines crash.
On the other hand, in the face of growing tensions between China and the EU, China also needs to try to balance its engagement with China and the EU, as well as with China and the United States. Geopolitical factors may be the main reason why China has to continue to give the green light to Boeing. European countries do not appear to have imposed tax breaks on imports of Chinese products because of China's goodwill. France, for example, treats Chinese electric vehicles differently and excludes Chinese electric vehicle companies from preferential policies. However, in an effort to maintain Sino-European relations, China announced a $37 billion plan in July 2022 to purchase 292 A320neo jetliners.
Under such circumstances, China's choice in the field of wide-body passenger aircraft is not easy, and it is difficult to maintain its own interests while balancing competitors, so China appears to be quite passive. In the long run, China is likely to continue to license Airbus and Boeing to the market, but will put in place certain controls to allow room for the C919 to grow. According to the news released by COMAC, once the production capacity is fully rolled out, the annual output of C919 aircraft and ARJ21 aircraft can reach 150 and 50 aircraft, which will drive the participation of 200 upstream and downstream enterprises and create at least 200,000 jobs.
Boeing provides about 2.5 million direct jobs in the industrial chain. It is foreseeable that after China gains a firm foothold in the field of large aircraft, it will pose a serious challenge to its competitors. Until then, however, China still needs to maintain balanced relations with the United States and Europe, which is an extremely challenging task. To gain a foothold in the wide-body airliner space, China needs to wait for the best time to make a move. China has the ability to seize the wide-body airliner space, but it is waiting for the best moment. For example, there are rumors that China has produced a 28nm lithography machine, but due to geopolitical considerations, China is not in a position to make it public.
The C919 actually has the ability to replace Boeing and Airbus, but China has chosen to take the path of stealth development for the sake of the overall situation. China's industrial production strength is self-evident, but whenever Chinese companies enter a certain field, related products are often labeled as "cabbage prices", forcing American and European companies to withdraw from the market. China is waiting for the best opportunity to make a move, and at present it continues to introduce large aircraft from the United States and Europe, just out of the need to maintain relations between the two sides. However, the pace of China's rise is unstoppable.
We firmly believe that one day, the 2.5 million high-paying jobs provided by Boeing will fall into the hands of Chinese. However, the United States and Europe will not abandon their intervention in China's internal affairs because of China's goodwill. The competition between the two sides in the political, military, economic, scientific, and technological fields will become more and more intense. China currently holds the initiative, and in the future, it will build an anti-encirclement and suppression strategy to break the cage policy of the United States and Europe.