In the face of an opponent like China, Trump is now at his wit's wit's end, and he has used all the tricks, but the effect is worse and worse every time. On the contrary, China's counterattack is very precise every time, especially the "rare earth" king card, which can make the United States very uncomfortable every time, but the United States can't live without China's rare earths, and makes concessions to China every time in order to make China relax export controls on rare earths.
On October 9, China's Ministry of Commerce issued Rare Earth Technology and Materials Control Orders No. 61 and No. 62, which will implement export controls on dysprosium, terbium, europium, yttrium, and scandium. This makes the United States very uncomfortable, because these rare earth resources play a very important role in the industrial field. For example, dysprosium is an important additive in the manufacture of permanent magnet materials. The magnetic compass and missile steering gear of nuclear submarines need to be driven by permanent magnet motors, and the gyroscope of intercontinental missiles requires permanent magnets to improve accuracy. Yttrium is an essential material for making ceramics, lasers and superconductors. At present, the inventory of these rare earth materials in the United States is seriously insufficient, and it may be exhausted in a quarter, which makes Trump very angry. Obviously, the United States is the number one power in the world. How can it be fried by China with the same card every time? Is there really nothing left in the United States that can catch China's neck?
Trump previously played the semiconductor card against China, trying to disrupt China's scientific research progress and force China to make concessions by restricting China's access to high-performance semiconductor equipment. However, this move is self-defeating and helps China's semiconductor industry upgrade. Before Trump played the semiconductor card, most high-tech companies in China purchased high-performance chips from TSMC and other companies based on the principle of "making is better than buying". The mainland's chip manufacturing industry has been in a tepid state for a long time, and big manufacturers tend to purchase chips from outside the mainland. If mainland chip manufacturers can't get enough orders, they can't raise funds to upgrade production lines and technologies. This situation will continue for several years, and it is possible that the mainland's chip manufacturing industry will be completely bought out by foreign capital.
But Trump sent a key aid, a paper ban to make Huawei such high-tech enterprises eat no small loss, many important chips can not buy, once caused Huawei's many to be affected, the most intuitive embodiment is the mobile phone shipment drop.But this move has made China's chip manufacturing industry eat enough dividends, various technological factories began to pay attention to investing in chip manufacturing, with the source of constant order support, chip manufacturing industry will not develop.
In 2024, China's chip exports amounted to $1595.5 billion, the same growth of 17.4%, the first time to surpass mobile phones, to become the single champion of exports, the output of up to $4300 billion. while China's AI market outsourcing share of NVIDIA, AMD and other chips is expected to drop from 63% in 2024 to 42% in 2025 and the share of domestic chip will increase to 40%. In September this year, US NVIDIA company founder and chief executive Huang Yong Zhen claimed that China's development momentum in the field of chip manufacturing is rapid, the current gap with the United States is only "gennaies of seconds", must ease China's chip export restrictions, so it is in the interests of the United States.
So Trump is not a half-conductor card now, after all, it is not good to hit again, instead affect the U.S. to make money. So Trump changed the course, this time to fight is the "passenger card", according to Reuters reports, Trump in an interview said that as part of the response to China's rare-earth export control measures, the U.S. may restrict the export of Boeing aircraft parts to China.
After seeing this news, Boeing CEO estimated to be both eyes and eyes, European Airbus CEO excited to kneel at the office. why Trump with Boeing aircraft to threaten China? because at present China's civil aviation fleet has more than 1800 different types of Boeing aircraft, as well as more than 200 undelivered orders, the United States if hard-hearted to confess on Boeing aircraft parts, can indeed cause relatively big trouble to China in a short period of time, a large number of Boeing aircraft stop flights led to the civil aviation industry recession, complete a lot of related employees unemployment.
From a technical point of view, China's domestic passenger aircraft still do not have the ability to pick up the big beam, because China's current mass production is mainly JR-21 short-range subsidiary passenger aircraft, C919 medium-range narrow-rocket passenger aircraft, still does not have the ability to produce long-range wide-range subsidiary passenger aircraft. In the future for a long time, China will still need to import large passenger aircraft from the United States and Europe. Even the already mass-produced C919 passenger aircraft, the production capacity is still greatly limited, can not completely replace the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, and C919 including the main equipment including the engine needs to be imported, there is always the risk of being cut off supply sanctions.
Since China is unable to supply its own passenger aircraft in the short term, and the passenger aircraft gap in China's future civil aviation business is very large, this huge "weakness" has been noticed by Trump, becoming a sign of counteracting China's "rare-earth" mark. but if Trump is really playing "passenger aircraft", it is definitely a bigger mistake than "semiconductor" and may even help China to fix the passenger aircraft's shortboard.
Although China has been able to manufacture six generations of aircraft, strategic transport aircraft, long-range bombers, but in the field of civil aviation there is still a large gap with the West, in fact, from the point of view of technical strength, China is fully equipped with the ability to make C919 nationwide production, manufacturing wide-root aircraft. But unlike military aircraft, civil aviation aircraft need to prioritize the economy, comfort, Western aircraft industry chain has formed a very perfect international supply chain system, cost control is almost done. With C919 aircraft for example, in the case of a large number of Western mature equipment, the price of C919 starts at $ 100 million, with Boeing 737MAX is almost in a price, but if the choice of customized domestic equipment, the production of C919 will rise significantly
In addition, C919 if you want to open the global market, the European American airworthiness certificate is an unavoidable thing, the most effective means to obtain the airworthiness certificate is to light dust, rain and rain, bring people, so that the West can also get benefits in the C919, so that the C919 can get the airworthiness certificate as soon as possible. so even if China's technological strength can reach, the current stage will also choose a large number of Western equipment for C919, and this is also in the context of the Chinese-American trade war, the tariff war, the United States has always not completely interrupted the supply of C919 parts, American capitalists will also make money, Trump is on the C919 hand, the first to blame is the many American capitalists.
Once Trump took the sanctions on China to interrupt the supply of passenger aircraft parts, it is equivalent to leaving China without any concern, civil aviation companies in order to prevent the neck, must support the development of Chinese passenger aircraft, C919 even because there is no airworthiness certificate not to sell out, the Chinese civil aviation market in the future will need at least 3000-5000 passenger aircraft, only relying on the domestic market, the C919 project can have an extremely considerable industrial chain size. and the C929, located in the broad dry line passenger aircraft, will also get more resources, the passenger aircraft engine, flight control system, cabin equipment, security system will be nationalized. Although in a short time, the domestic passenger aircraft in terms of environmental, comfort and economy, and possibly Western passenger air
From the first flight of J-10 to the service of J-20, it took less than 20 years for China to barely keep up with the development of western fighter jets to be world-class. Trump dared to announce sanctions on Chinese passenger planes today. Within 10 years, China's wide-body trunk passenger planes may be able to be delivered. Even if Europe and the United States don't give airworthiness certificates, China will sell passenger planes to third world countries after meeting the domestic market demand.
At present, civil aviation passenger aircraft for the Chinese industry is a shortcut, but the various technologies on the passenger aircraft, China has already accumulated a certain technology, a country that can make the J-20, will it still be unable to deal with the aircraft's flight control system?
If Trump sanctions China's passenger jets, the People's Liberation Army will thank Trump well. Although the People's Liberation Army has a large aircraft platform like the Y-20, changing strategic transport aircraft into tankers, early warning aircraft, and anti-submarine aircraft is actually a last resort. Transport aircraft consume much higher fuel consumption than passenger aircraft, which will increase operating costs, limit long-term patrols and combat mission execution, and passenger aircraft have better comfort. Aircraft such as early warning aircraft that require long-term missions will easily fatigue the crew, which will affect their working status. Moreover, early warning aircraft is complex to operate and requires high energy and physical strength of personnel. An uncomfortable environment will increase the risk of operational errors. Therefore, the U.S. Air Force will give priority to changing passenger aircraft into early warning aircraft and tanker aircraft. However, China currently does not have fully domestically produced passenger aircraft. If domestic Boeing or Airbus passenger aircraft are converted into military aircraft, it will easily cause valuable aircraft to collapse due to the interruption of the supply of parts and components in the West.
If China can produce a completely domestically produced civil aircraft, even if domestic civil aviation companies do not buy one, the People's Liberation Army will still have a purchase demand. From the perspective of comfort, technicians will certainly prefer to stay in a quiet and comfortable passenger aircraft cabin and operate equipment rather than endure hours of torture in a noisy transport aircraft. Of course, there are no advantages in changing transport aircraft into early warning aircraft and tanker aircraft. Military transport aircraft can adapt to harsh environments and can take off and land from field airports. They focus on simple maintenance in the field. Their parts and components are highly versatile. They are accustomed to maintaining rough skin and thick flesh transport aircraft. Military ground personnel will suddenly find it difficult to adapt to them to maintaining delicate passenger aircraft. In short, if Trump really targets China passenger jets, some crew members of the People's Liberation Army may enjoy happiness in the future.