None of four foreign manufacturers has yet dropped out of talks with Chinese fighter builder Avic Aviation Techniques (AAT) aimed at joint development and manufacture of business jets. It is unclear, however, whether all of the bidders are keen to participate in the whole program proposed by AAT—transfer of a current business jet production line to the company’s Chengdu works and joint development of a large new aircraft, with considerable technological transfer.

In early 2008, Avic I, as it was called then, announced it was setting up an airline that would buy its regional airliners, a move that had many industry watchers perplexed. To any trenchant doubter of China's future in civil aeronautics, it must have seemed that the product—the 50-60-seat MA60 turboprop—was so uncompetitive that Avic I could only sell it to itself.

With little publicity, South Korean engineers are working on the largest and most complicated aircraft their country has built independently, an unmanned surveillance aircraft called MUAV. From the scanty information available, they seem to have a technically successful program on their hands, one that augurs well for their ambitious national industry. The problem is that it might turn out to be a fiscal failure.