Fight for 10,000 meters of high altitude: Boeing Airbus's Chinese commercial war and victory

A high altitude war.

Text 丨 Chinese Shang Tao Li Mu Bai

In March 1965, Premier Zhou Enlai visited Romania.

The moment the special plane landed, the Romanians present whispered: the leaders of other countries were riding on their own aircraft, and only the Chinese leader's planes were rented from Pakistan.

The comrades of the embassy told Premier Zhou. On the way back to China, the Prime Minister said a word to the follow -up civil aviation staff: "The civil aviation in China is going to fly out. Only by flying out can we open the situation."

【Preconceived】

In 1971, China, which restored the legal seat of the United Nations, opened a wave of establishment of diplomatic relations.

Seeing that there are more and more demand for "flying out", but the reality is terrible: China at that time only had four international routes to the Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

One of the reasons: Long -distance ocean flying requires world -class equipment.

At that time, the aircraft that Prime Minister Zhou Enlai visited was the Il-18 aircraft produced by the Soviet Union with a maximum fuel range of 6500 kilometers. Another mainstream model trident is also a short -range passenger aircraft. It is difficult to sustain for long -distance visits.

▲ Il-18

This gives the two major aviation giants two opportunities: they are therefore able to board the stage of China Civil Aviation.

At 11:30 noon on February 21, 1972, a blue and white Boeing 707 aircraft slowly landed at Beijing Airport. Before the US President Nixon stepped down, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai greeted at the airport actively stretched out his hands.

This time, the handshake across the Pacific Ocean announced that the relationship between China and the United States began to be normalized, and it also opened the door to the Chinese market for Boeing aircraft. An extensive statement is that the comfort and advancedness of Boeing 707 impressed Chinese leaders.

With the demonstration effect, business is naturally water. After the Boeing sales team arrived in Beijing, the China side had made a decision to purchase the Boeing 707 before the detailed product display.

But at that time, Sino -US relations were still in a subtle stage. The tentative and wary of each other is also interspersed in the transaction.

On February 23, 1973, the former Ministry of Machinery Industry of China led the "Civil Aviation Boeing Technology Acceptance Team" to enter the Boeing Seattle Factory. Said to be accepted, it is actually to learn experience and technology. Of course, there is also a purpose that cannot be explicitly said: beware of the Americans "make bad".

Working groups that do not even understand English really found problems in the acceptance. When the first Boeing 707 aircraft was installed, the acceptance team found that the Boeing employees opened a hole on the top of the aircraft, and then they replenished the hole in accordance with the process and safety standards, and they hit a circle of rivets around.

I obviously bought a new aircraft, but the result was a broken patch. What is the difference between buying a second -hand? The acceptance team felt that it was difficult to go back. The two sides stalemate for a month. After several rounds of negotiations, the dispute was put on hold.

In August 1973, the delivery ceremony of the first Boeing 707 aircraft was officially held. At that time, the chairman of the board of directors of Boeing, Wilson said: The connection and friendship between Boeing and China will not cool down with the end of the aircraft delivery ceremony. With the operation of Boeing 707 in China, it continues to spread.

Wilson is really affectionate, but this "friendship" has a bit of interest. Just like the famous saying of Western diplomats: "There is no eternal friend, only eternal interests", Wilson is looking at the booming civil aviation market in China.

Under the hopes of "flying out", China has accelerated the development of international routes. By the end of 1976, the international routes of China Civil Aviation had developed to eight, with a mileage of 40,000 kilometers, and the demand for civil aircraft also increased.

Not only Boeing, but also more than a dozen aircraft manufacturers such as Europe, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and Canada. Everyone sells melons. Each said that each is good, but the Chinese are not so foolish. The financial resources are not abundant, and you must choose more carefully.

In a report, the then leader of the State Council asked the report and asked: "Since the Soviet Il-86 is cheap, why is it unwilling to buy it?"

The people present could not answer, but the consensus in their hearts was clear: buying a plane depends on the "place of production". European and American aircraft will always be better than the Soviet Union.

Even so, but the air bus company from Europe, when she first entered China, she ate closed doors.

In 1984, Airbus sent a high -level delegation and held the instructions of the A310 passenger plane to China to sell it in China. They sat in the conference room for a day, but in the end, no one saw it.

Airbus really knocked on China's door, and it has been waiting until 1985, and Boeing has been working in the Chinese market for 13 years. But as the old ancestors said, the beginning of the goodness may not end well, and Boeing and Airbus, the duel of the enemy, have just begun.

【Leading and Sao】

The aircraft is both a commodity and a game of geopolitics. The fate of Boeing and Airbus is undulating, which is not only subject to the needs of the Chinese market, the conversion of corporate market strategies, but also the game hidden above the temple.

In November 1993, while President Jiang Zemin visited the United States, he deliberately visited a family of ordinary workers in Boeing. As soon as he walked out, the reporter scrambled to ask, "How is this family, happy and unhappy?"

The leader's speaking is naturally more level than ordinary people. He quoted a sentence at the beginning of Russian writer Lev Tolsta "Anna Carenina". To reporters, "Happy families are the same, unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately The family has its own unfortunate. "Boeing in the 1990s is undoubtedly the" happiest "aircraft manufacturer in the Chinese market. In 1990, China and Boeing signed an order in China at that time: confirmed to order 36 Boeing planes and intention to order 36 Boeing aircraft, totaling 9 billion US dollars.

As the image of Boeing Golden Lord, China has gradually become popular. A Boeing Chinese engineer once joked with his colleagues proudly: Boeing 737 departments have a salary of 1/4 employees, all issued by China.

Behind the purchase of a large number of Boeing aircraft, there are both political considerations and realistic needs. At that time, Sino -US relations were in the honeymoon period. China also needed the United States to extend the most benefited of the country. The attitude of the purchaser was obviously biased towards Boeing.

As a savvy businessman, Boeing also knows the meaning of "investing in peaches". Clarkson, then senior vice president of Boeing, publicly stated in the U.S. Congress that Boeing supports China's most beneficial position in China. Not only that, he also personally ended up with many important members of the Clinton government to persuade them to accept Boeing's position.

It is inseparable from Boeing's attention to the Chinese market in the Chinese market. The professor of the School of Management of China Civil Aviation University has mentioned a detail: the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration led a subject research, that is, "how to choose a model", when the then Boeing Company's representative Chen Fan learned from the representative of China Boeing organizational training.

The teacher who taught the last lecture was two experts invited by Boeing from the United States.

Which customer can dislike such a "intimate" service. Moreover, Boeing also assumes the heavy responsibility of training talents for the aviation industry. According to incomplete statistics, from 1993 to 2001, Boeing trained more than 15,000 Chinese aviation professionals, half of which were flight, maintenance and machinery.

But the vast Chinese market is not inorganic, and even with Boeing, it is really unable to swallow the entire Chinese market.

As China's economy grows rapidly, more and more people choose aircraft. In 1992 alone, people who chose aviation travel increased by one -third from the previous year, but the gap in large passenger planes has not been able to block it.

Seeing Boeing's popularity in China, Airbus could no longer hold back, and made his own killer- "cost -effective". At that time, the Airbus was sometimes cheaper than the Boeing of the same seat, and sometimes it could even be nearly nearly one million US dollars. With this trick, Airbus gradually squeezed a market in the Chinese market.

In the early 1990s, companies such as Northern Airlines, China International Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Sichuan Airlines successively joined the customer base of Airbus. By 1995, Airbus had 29 aircraft in China.

While the market share has increased, Airbus has gradually taken root in China. In 1994, Airbus China Co., Ltd. was established and established an office in Beijing.

Although the Airbus has come aggressively, the share of the Boeing market that has been in China for many years still ranks first, and it is obviously even more deeper.

At a Beijing Air Show in the early 1990s, Airbus employees who participated in the air show went to the Boeing counter to exchange souvenirs with Boeing employees. Boeing employees asked which companies they came from. Airbus employees replied, "It's your opponent."

Boeing employees' answers are full of Versailles: "We have no opponents."

Chinese ordinary people know very little about Airbus. An old sales of Airbus recalled a detail: When the Airbus A320 began to enter China in 1995, when he queued at the airport, he heard the passengers who queued up at the A320 and said, "Look, Boeing Aircraft."

【Ding Ding Dark Fighting】

In March 2004, in order to build a momentum for Boeing 787, Boeing held a product promotion meeting in Beijing.

At the promotion meeting, the Boeing Products and Service Market Director Randy Tingsez pointed out politely that the fuel consumption of the Airbus A330 series is too high. In contrast, the fuel consumption of Boeing 787 can be reduced by 20%. Each year can reduce the expenditure of 18 million yuan for airlines.

Facing the dirty water splashed by competitors, Airbus chose "the way of the other, and also applied himself."

At another venue, the senior vice president of the Airbus company Olivi Andrez, which is responsible for marketing, directly accused Boeing's plagiarism of the design ideas of Airbus A300 to 200, and believed that the number of seats available for 787 could not satisfy at all. The needs of airlines.

The reason why the enemy is the enemy is that the resentment is too deep. This is not the first time that the Boeing and Airbus have spoiled each other. As early as the end of 2003, after Airbus launched the new product A350, Boeing immediately stated that the Airbus A350 plagiarized 7E7 design ideas. At the same time, because the original product concept was abandoned, he faced many obstacles in subsequent actual use.

Behind the chattering of saliva is Boeing and Airbus's equivalent and optimistic judgments on the Chinese market. In 2004, Boeing senior management predicted that in the next 20 years, China will need 3770 new aircraft for $ 400 billion. Airbus said that in the next 20 years, Asia -Pacific will exceed Europe and the United States, becoming the world's largest aviation transportation market.

Everyone can see that China is unwilling to be a local tyrant who is only "buying and buying", but is eager to participate in the global division of labor manufactured by commercial aircraft. However, in order to do its own large commercial aircraft, production technology and technology need to be accumulated. To grasp the needs of the other party and take out the greatest sincerity, it is most likely to win the transaction. Airbus and Boeing naturally understand this truth. Since 2004, the two giants have increased their cooperation with domestic aviation manufacturing companies.

In June of this year, the Airbus Company signed an industrial cooperation agreement with a total value of $ 100 million in Paris, France. Airbus even expressed that he hopes to see China's market share of more than 10%on the future aircraft project of Airbus.

Boeing cooperates with enterprises such as AVIC Group, AVIC II Group, and Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Manufacturing Company to provide parts and components for Boeing 747 and other models.

But in cooperation with China, Airbus's steps are obviously bigger.

In 2006, Airbus announced that it would establish the A320 total loading line in Tianjin. Although it is only the main part of the aircraft to assemble it, not production, it is still a big breakthrough for China.

Faced with the big move released by Airbus, Boeing regarded it as a small carving technique that "replaced the market with technology", and it was clearly stated that it would not establish a total loading line in China.

But the facts that happened later proved that Airbus's strategy has achieved great success.

Before the completion of the Airbus Tianjin General Line, Airbus took 25 years to achieve 500 aircraft sales in the Chinese market. However, since the first aircraft of Tianjin's assembly factory in 2009, Airbus has sold 500 additional separately in China in just 5 years.

The market does not give Boeing opportunities, but this company does not cherish it. The senior management of Boeing China has revealed that Boeing has indeed considered the establishment of a single -channel aircraft assembly production line in China, but this idea was eventually rejected.

In 2013, Boeing's order in China was finally surpassed by Airbus, and a new era opened, and this may be just the beginning of Boeing's defeat in the Chinese market.

[Boeing defeat? .

Bolong, the head of the Airbus China, has summarized the three major success elements for Airbus's China Raiders: one is to form an excellent team, the other is to increase the construction of basic service facilities, establish training and technology centers in Beijing The third is to greatly increase industrial cooperation and technological transfer with Chinese aviation manufacturing companies.

In fact, it is the third one that really plays a key role. A ambitious China hopes to achieve technical gains through cooperation with Boeing and Airbus. In this regard, Airbus is really "generous" than Boeing.

But I do n’t know if it is intentional or unintentional, but Bolong ignores the fourth element: complex geopolitics.

As we mentioned: the aircraft has never been a simple product, but a game of complex geopolitics. The final choice is often not determined by a single factor.

In 1996, the Taiwan Strait crisis broke out. In April of that year, China -France signed an agreement worth $ 1.5 billion and purchased 30 A320. In May, China Oriental Airlines also signed an order to purchase 8 A340 passenger planes. The Boeing orders declared by the airline have not been approved.

History is like a cycle, and there will always be so many amazing similar moments. Since November 2017, Boeing has not announced any orders for selling products to Chinese passenger airlines. Although the two parties have been negotiating on airplane orders, they basically end.

On March 10, 2019, the Boeing 737MAX8 model occurred for the second crash within more than four months. The next day, the Civil Aviation Administration of China first issued a 737max8 flight instructions. This seems to be a signal. Boeing and the Chinese market have cracks, and Boeing then announced that production capacity may be reduced.

Former CEO Stone Satopa once said: "Boeing can only be the first, and the second means elimination." But as of the end of 2020, the number of Chinese active aircraft aircraft accounted for 51%of the domestic civil aviation market. Boeing is no longer the first. One.

For Boeing, even worse things happened in May 2022. It announced in China ’s largest customer, China Southern Airlines announced that more than 100 Boeing 737max was removed from the order.

On July 1, China ’s three major airlines announced that the total price of 240 billion yuan will purchase 292 Airbus A320NEO series aircraft from Airbus. Among them, 96 southern Airlines bought.

Why is there no Boeing? In fact, it is not a difficult question. When the game above the temple comes, even a giant like Boeing is unbearable.

The British "Financial Times" commented that for the two major aircraft manufacturers in the world, China is a vital growth market. This transaction is a major success in Airbus in the wrestling with Boeing.

This really made Boeing restless. According to Reuters reports, Boeing spokesman said: "As the largest US exporter in the United States who has been related to the Chinese aviation industry in the future, geopolitical differences continue to restrict US aircraft exports, which is disappointing."

The President of Boeing Calkhne shouted to the US President Biden, which was almost tragedy:

"If Boeing is kicked out of the Chinese market because of the US policy, then such losses are unbearable. I hope that the US government can separate the contradictions between China and the United States with trade."

Linking trade and politics, from the perspective of geopolitical perspective, speculation in Civil Aviation procurement between China and Europe is of course the inertia thinking of Americans. It may also be one of the factors that promote the final choice. However, today's civil aviation market is a thorough buyer market. Any capable buyer can choose which product to buy in accordance with his own wishes.

Boeing said to the outside world that it will continue to urge the Chinese and American governments to have a "effective" dialogue to help orders and delivery can recover smoothly.

This is of course the rationality of business, but the rationality is not enough. To change the views of others, I am afraid that a better way is to urge yourself to change first.

【Reference Information】

[1] "Drizzle and Dresilment of Silent -Visit the Civil Aviation Administration Director Lu Rui Ling" China Civil Aviation News

[2] "50 years of civil aviation purchases: technical details of hundreds of millions of dollars in buying and selling" Sanlian Life Weekly

[3] "Boeing, Airbus Dou Show China" invests in Beijing

[4] "The beginning of a new era -Ji Boeing 707 Enter China" International Airlines

[5] "Boeing in China Forty Years" People's Daily Online

[6] "Airbus Land in China" China Civil Aviation Information Network

[7] "For the world is better -Jiang Zemin's visit to the documentary" Zhong Zhicheng

[8] "The Global Competition of Boeing and Airbus" John Newhaus

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