[throwawaylinux]

> Nope, before the Sino-Soviet split and shortly thereafter there was zero serious effort to build jet engines.

Nope, the WP-1A was built in 1958. Just because they were incapable of designing their own competitive jet engine does not mean they were not attempting to.

> China never, ever, ever had anywhere near the engineering resources of the Soviet Union. To suggest as much is insanity. They arrived to that level somewhere before 2010.

You mean somewhere after? Totally disagree. Clearly there were not good or well run resources like the soviets, but they had the money and the manpower earlier than that. If you're just looking at GDP overlap that is misleading because it does not account for more people in China, or the relative advantage it gets from much stronger computing power and ability to copy more advanced designs. Also you're taking the GDP from the height of the USSR, which is not representative of its economic power for those same 70 years it was designing engines.

> China already has competitive engines. They can and do simply buy Russian engines.

Not the most advanced ones.

> Domestic engine development is a nice-to-have, and not a huge priority. This is obviously reflected in the low budgets and the low number of employees in these programs. This is public information.

That shows how much you know. It is a huge priority for them and it has been for a long time.

[sudosysgen]

In 1958 the Chinese built the WP-5/PF-1 the WP-1A, which was a license built version of the Soviet VK-1 and descendants.

The first Chinese-designed jet engine was the WP-14, and the project started in the mid 80s.

China did not have enough engineers to rival the USSR until after the fall.

> That shows how much you know. It is a huge priority for them and it has been for a long time.

It really hasn't. Defence in general is not a big priority of the Chinese state. Even within defence, producing new airframes is a much bigger than domestic engines.

> Not the most advanced ones.

Incorrect. The most advanced Russian engine in mass production is the AL-31F series, which is sold to China. Further developments intended for production, the AL-41F, are not in mass production.

[throwawaylinux]

> In 1958 the Chinese built the WP-5/PF-1 the WP-1A, which was a license built version of the Soviet VK-1 and descendants.

The WP-5 was the VK-1 clone which was the first jet built in China in 1956.

The WP-1A was a Chinese design in built in 1958.

After that they claim not to have developed any, but that's because they were all failures until Kunlun which they don't want to boast about so they make that one sound like the very first effort. It was not.

> China did not have enough engineers to rival the USSR until after the fall.

Maybe. It doesn't take 30 years to train an engineer though. How many engineers did they have?

> It really hasn't.

It really has. They've been trying to reverse engineer and clone Russian engines for a long time. Why would they be doing that if they were satisfied just buying Russian?

> Defence in general is not a big priority of the Chinese state. Even within defence, producing new airframes is a much bigger than domestic engines.

That's what they claim of course because they don't like to draw attention to their failures.

> Incorrect. The most advanced Russian engine in mass production is the AL-31F series, which is sold to China. Further developments intended for production, the AL-41F, are not in mass production.

So not the most advanced ones.