Washington state has an airplane factory in the woods and a car fiber (BMW) plant out in the desert. In the city you can find businesses to build anything.
That's interesting to hear. In South Carolina we've got BMW in the Greenville area and Boeing in Charleston. The Greenville area itself virtually imploded 30 years ago with the textile industry and BMW has largely driven the recovery. Now it's one of the best places to live in the state.
The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s.
That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.
what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s
I am late to this discussion, but James Fallows wrote China Airborn, a book about precisely this topic! The answer is complicated—if it weren't, he'd not bother writing a whole book about it—but the short answer is that so far China's not succeeded.
China does lots of stuff well and deserves credit for it but is not the indomitable powerhouse sometimes suggested in the media (e.g. http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-m..., although I don't know if this piece or others like it are for real).
The "quick, cheap, disposable" stereotype of Chinese manufacturing (whether deserved or not) seems like it would be a major hurdle for breaking into the Western civil aviation market. I see a lot of people leery of Airbus due to their approach to computer control and fly-by-wire, and that's without any doubts about their manufacturing care or attention to quality control.
They sell Chinese pickup trucks here in New Zealand under the brand "Great Wall".
Everything I've heard about them is that they're unreliable and unsafe to an extreme degree. You're apparently better off buying a 3 year old Toyota Hilux or Nissan Navara for the same price as a brand new Chinese truck.
How long ago did these vehicles go on sale and has there been any improvement in quality since? Japanese and Korean vehicles in general had a rough time entering the US market (decades ago). They did start off being lower quality. But they got better. I wonder if this "Great Wall" manufacturer has it in them to make vehicles that are competitive on a global basis.
> The second stage of the project will involve the complete transfer of technology, including the 23 ton thrust Progress D-18T turbofan engines, to China, for licensed production of a modernized version in Sichuan Province.