The frigate, delivered in Shanghai yesterday, has stealth capabilities, will be responsible for patrol escort, and can carry out anti-submarine warfare, the PLA Daily said. Admiral Wu Shengli, a member of the Central Military Commission, attended the ceremony.

The frigate’s delivery is part of a wider military advance that’s seen China commission its first aircraft carrier and enhance its jet-fighter program. It comes after Chinese and Japanese vessels have tailed each other for months around the islands, raising tensions and straining a $340 billion trade relationship.

[…] China’s defense spending, the second highest in the world after the U.S., was set to grow 11.2 percent to 670 billion yuan ($106.4 billion) in 2012. The country will announce its 2013 figure just before the annual meeting of its legislature begins next week.

Elsewhere, the aircraft carrier Liaoning docked in its new home port of Qingdao this week, while the recent revelation that China contemplated a drone strike against wanted drug lord Naw Kham in Myanmar underlined the progress of its UAV and Beidou satellite navigation programs. Less glamorous but equally significant is the expansion of China’s sea and air military transport capacity. At Reuters, David Lague describes recent steps in this direction, and their strategic implications:

These transport workhorses are unlikely to arouse the same regional unease as the steady rollout of high performance fighters, long-range missiles or potent warships, but they are a crucial element of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) three-decade military build-up, defense analysts say.

Over time, the air and sea support will give the world’s second-largest navy greater geographical reach and will enhance the PLA’s capacity to assist troops on distant battlefields, potentially including Taiwan if Beijing were to launch a military assault to take control of the self-governing island.

China’s state-owned shipyards last year launched two 23,000-tonne type 903 replenishment ships, according to reports and photographs published on Chinese military affairs websites and blogs, with further orders in the pipeline.

[…] China also confirmed last month that the PLA had conducted the first test flight of its Y-20 heavy lift aircraft from the Yanliang airbase near Xi’an in Shaanxi Province.

See more on the Y-20′s first flight via CDT.

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The Yun-20, or Transport-20, is a huge, multi-function airfreighter which can perform various long-distance air transportation tasks targeting cargo and passengers, Xinhua learnt on Saturday.

The successful maiden flight of Yun-20 is significant in promoting China’s economic and national defense buildup as well as bettering its emergency handling such as disaster relief and humanitarian aid.

The giant aircraft will continue to undergo experiments and test flights as scheduled.

This comes amid concerns over China’s focus on aerospace development. With the unveiling of a stealth fighter, according to Bloomberg, the new freight plane is extending China’s military modernization program:

China achieved a military milestone when its fighter jet landed on its new aircraft carrier in November, extending a modernization bid that’s recorded advances in submarines, cyber warfare and in outer space.

The aircraft tests underscore China’s progress in military modernization, which has been accompanied by a doubling of the defense budget in six years. China, the biggest spender on defense after the U.S., has become increasingly assertive in the region as President Barack Obama executes a strategic shift toward Asia and tensions rise with Japan and other nations over territorial disputes.

China’s defense spending, estimated at 670 billion yuan ($108 billion) in 2012, has more than doubled since 2006, tracking a rise in nominal gross domestic product to 47.2 trillion yuan from 21.6 trillion yuan.

Read more about aviation in China, via CDT.

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According to the plan, the nation will guide the localization of aircraft, engines and airborne equipment, and encourage research and development of domestic regional aircraft and general aviation aircraft.

The plan also calls for making the airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou into large-size international airport hubs, as well as nurturing the gateway airports in Kunming in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province and Urumqi in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The CAAC’s plan also includes reforming the use of the country’s airspace, which commercial pilots have blamed for delayed flights and the increase in passenger ‘air rage’. Bloomberg reports:

A more than 90-fold surge in China’s economy in the past two decades has fueled demand for flights. The State Council’s plan is based on guidelines released in July last year that were the first China has issued for the domestic aviation industry. Chinese carriers will need 5,260 new planes worth $670 billion through 2031, according to Boeing Co. (BA) forecasts.

“The government is sending a clear message that aviation is very important,” said Li Lei, a Beijing-based analyst at China Minzu Securities Co. “But the current problems such as airspace restrictions or airport slot limits won’t change overnight.”

Although the plan outlines the aims for civil aircraft, China’s recent show of military power by landing a fighter jet and unveiling a stealth fighter has prompted both welcome and worry. China’s aerospace ties to the military have raised issues for American regulators, according to The New York Times:

Washington is trying to figure out what to do about China’s deal-making broadly. “Many of these transactions raise important security issues for our country,” said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was created by Congress to monitor the bilateral relationship. “China’s interest in promoting these investments isn’t necessarily consistent with our own interests, and it’s appropriate to thoroughly examine the transactions.”

“There has always been an obvious cross-fertilization of ideas, expertise and money between the civilian and military,” said Martin Craigs, a longtime aerospace executive in Asia who is now the chairman of the Aerospace Forum Asia, a nonprofit group in Hong Kong. He added that Chinese companies had been actively hiring senior American and European aerospace engineers, so national security concerns could be quelled some by hiring the right people.

Western companies and their advisers say that they are acutely aware that technology transfers could help China strengthen its military and develop more competitive civil airplanes, and are taking precautions to protect trade secrets and national security. “You transfer the part that is most easily reverse engineered, or easily dissected,” said a lawyer with detailed knowledge of these transactions.

But many in the aerospace sector are more skeptical that the West can avoid losing control of technology. “The mentality is, they’re going to find a way to get there anyway, and we may as well get there with them,” Mr. Harbison of the CAPA-Center for Aviation said.

Read more about aviation in China, via CDT.

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One reaction to a hold-up at Shanghai’s main international airport this year caused a further 16-hour delay in itself, when 20 angry passengers invaded the runway and came within 200 metres of an oncoming plane from the United Arab Emirates.

In October, a mob of passengers held an Australian pilot hostage for six hours when their flight was diverted from Beijing to Shanghai because of bad weather.

They surrounded a Jetstar crew in a section of the arrivals area and refused to let them leave, fearing they would be left to find their own way home from Shanghai, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The common complaint is that the airlines often leave delayed passengers in the dark about the situation.

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The Global Times said the men, from the Uighur minority group, died in hospital of injuries sustained trying to break into the plane’s cockpit.

Six people were detained after the incident on Friday, in which several people were injured.

The Global Times, citing unnamed officials, said the men had died “from injuries received in a fight with passengers and crew”.

The Tianjin Airlines plane had just taken off from Hotan and was bound for Urumqi when the incident occurred.

Furthermore, authorities are claiming that the two men were staging a terrorist attack, the Irish Times adds:

TWO MEN who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in far west China by battering the cockpit door with a crutch and trying to set off what were suspected to be explosives have died from injuries sustained in a fight with passengers and crew.

An overseas rights group said the incident was not a hijacking attempt but a fight over a disputed seat, but Chinese authorities insisted it was a terror attack.

“It is a serious and violent terrorist attack by means of hijacking an airplane,” ran a report on the official website for the Xinjiang region, Tianshan.

The Global Times newspaper reported that six members of the Uighur ethnic group used crutches and “held items suspected to be explosives” to break into the cockpit 10 minutes after the Tianjin Airlines flight carrying 92 passengers and nine crew members took off from Hotan to the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.

According to the Shanghai Daily, the passengers and crew would receive a monetary reward for their bravery aboard the flight:

Six police officers, five of them from the Uygur ethnic minority, were on Tianjin Airlines’ flight GS7554, the unidentified official, said to be commander of operations on the ground, told the newspaper.

The official said Liu Huijun, a passenger sitting next to the cockpit in the first-class section, was one of the first people to figure out that the hijacking was under way and he shouted out a warning to other passengers. Liu knocked an explosive device out of the hands of a hijacker but he was hit on the head.

The Xinjiang government said yesterday that each of the 10 people, including police officers, flight attendants and passengers who helped fight the hijackers, would receive a 100,000 yuan (US$15,751) reward for their bravery.

The cabin crew would also share a 500,000 yuan reward.

Tensions between Han and Uighur ethnic groups have been high in Xinjiang in recent years. Uighur rights groups to claim that the attack was actually due to a seat dispute, The Telegraph reports:

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress which campaigns for Uighurs’ rights, said Friday that it wasn’t a hijacking attempt but an in-flight brawl over a seat dispute.

Friday’s incident occurred just a few days before the anniversary of the July 2009 riots in Urumqi when nearly 200 people were killed in fighting between Han Chinese and Uighurs.

Tensions are already high in Hotan, where authorities raided a religious school recently and are conducting home searches, according to the Washington-based Uighur American Association.

Netizens and microbloggers have also commented on the incident, and some have claimed to have had friends on the flight. From The Guardian:

Microblog accounts from people who claim they had friends on the flights said passengers helped to overcome the men and tie them up.

One microblogger told AP: “They had a long crutch that can be broken into pieces, and the pieces had sharp ends.”

In another account, a businessman said the head of Xinjiang’s grain bureau told him that its vice director, known only as Mr Liu, had been on board and had extinguished the fuse of a homemade explosive device.

Read more about Xinjiang and the Uighur ethnic group, via CDT.

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A Lockheed Martin official last week emailed an unsigned memo to lawmakers on Capitol Hill titled “Taiwan — The Benefit of New F-16 C/Ds,” two congressional staff members said ….

The Lockheed memo included “rebuttal points” to what Lockheed called the expected conclusion of a Pentagon report that the administration could use to try to defuse criticism of its decision not to release new F-16s to Taiwan.

Lockheed Martin neither confirmed nor denied having circulated the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. It said a sale of F-16s would benefit not only the company but generate more than 16,000 jobs in the United states over five to six years, citing a study it had commissioned.

The existing agreement, worth over $5 billion, has already prompted a characteristically unenthusiastic response from Beijing.

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[With] the development of China’s private aviation industry has come another status symbol: a pilot’s license. Despite pricey training costs, which range between 60,000-80,000 yuan (US$9,278-12,371) — upwards of three times the country’s annual per capita GDP — ChinaLuxus noted this week that 1,600 budding pilots have already obtained official licenses in China, with the site suggesting that the actual number is far higher. Sort of a frightening prospect, but someone has to pilot the much-discussed “black flights” taking place across the country.

… According to industry sources, before flying legally, new pilots must take three steps, as proscribed by civil aviation law: First pilots need an official license issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China; Second, pilots need a secondary pilot’s license issued by “relevant departments” in their region; Finally, a pilot needs to get permission for their flight plan from all air traffic control departments.

With these measures in place, and so much red tape to cut through, it’s almost no surprise so many pilots and private jet owners in China would rather pay the fines, which the New York Times noted “can range up to 100,000 renminbi, or about $15,400.”

On Twitter, Lonnie Hodge comments that “the ultimate status symbol here on the Silk Road is being able to afford vegetables.”

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China hasn’t had a good track record building big airplanes. The first Made-in-China big jet was the Shanghai Y-10, which had its maiden flight on Sept. 26, 1980. The 150-seat jet was as big as a Boeing 707 and bore a striking similarity to the American plane. The Y-10 flew 130 times, but the Chinese retired it in 1985 because local airlines refused to purchase it, preferring to buy the more fuel-efficient planes from Boeing (BA) and McDonnell Douglas instead.

Two decades later, the Chinese government is hoping for better luck. At a ceremony in Shanghai on May 11, China unveiled its latest attempt to build a larger jet—or literally “big airplane” in Mandarin—with the launch of the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (CACC). The company’s mandate: assemble jets at home to reduce the nation’s reliance on Western-made planes. There’s no shortage of demand. The aviation industry conservatively predicts the country will buy 2,800 new airplanes worth $329 billion over the next 20 years to keep up with China’s scorching air travel growth. “Obviously, China wants to be part of this perceived profitable airplane making business,” says Martin Lin, head of the American Chamber of Commerce in China’s aerospace group. “But profits will come only when China will be able successfully to capture international markets.”

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Boeing said on Tuesday that China will require 3,400 new airplanes worth about $340 billion over the next 20 years, raising its forecast for the Asian giant’s booming aviation arena. Previously, the plane maker had projected China would need 2,800 airplanes for the next two decades.

“China domestic frequencies have increased more than 16-fold since 1990, while airplane sizes have remained about the same,” Randy Tinseth, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice- President for Marketing said in a statement….[Full Text]

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China unveiled the locally built Jian-10 last week, saying it narrows the gap with advanced nations.

A sleek, swept-wing fighter-bomber dubbed the “Jian-10,” unveiled here last week, is more than just another jet plane. It is China’s calling card, announcing Beijing’s arrival among the top ranks of military manufacturers.

Powered by Chinese engines and firing Chinese precision-guided missiles, the locally built Jian-10 has “allowed China to become the fourth country in the world” to have developed such a capability, “narrowing the gap with advanced nations,” boasted Geng Ruguang, deputy general manager of the plane’s manufacturer, Avic-I.[Full Text]

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