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| Su-35 (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons) |
After more than a year of haggling over the details, Russia has agreed to sell China 24 Su-35 fighters. The big obstacle to this sale was the Chinese inability to assure Russia that the new Russian technology in these aircraft would not be stolen by Chinese aviation firms. Apparently a mutually agreeable compromise was worked out.
At first China refused to buy Su-35 fighters from Russia if a "no unauthorized duplication" clause was included in the contract. The Chinese wanted to buy the Su-35s but were not willing to sign a binding agreement to not copy the Russian design. China is already producing unauthorized copies of the Russian Su-27, as the J11 and Russia is not happy with that at all. China has since designed a two-seat fighter bomber version (the J16), a stealthy version (J17), and obtained an aircraft carrier version of the Su-30 (the Su-33) from Ukraine and are producing a copy (as the J15).
China insists these are all Chinese designs that just happen to bear some resemblance to Russian fighters. In response Russia halted combat aircraft sales to China but still sold jet engines for these aircraft. So far, China has been unsuccessful in building copies of these engines. The engine sales are too lucrative to pass up, as they enable the Russian engine manufacturers to continue developing new designs. The Chinese plan to steal these as soon as they figure out how to handle the exotic manufacturing skills required to build these engines.
Read the full story at Strategy Page