February 9, 2012

Chinese Defence Industry Way Ahead of India's


China's J-20 stealth fighter prototype
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India's Business Standard, July 18, 2011 reports:

'China's defence industry offers lessons to India"

article mentions Chinese developments including the J-10, early J-20 and DF-21B anti-carrier ballistic missile.

Article ends:

"...China’s defence industry has achieved major recent successes, triggered by its restructuring at the end of the 20th century. Earlier, the Chinese defence industry was separated, Soviet style, between research and development (R&D) and manufacturing units. When the R&D developed a product, the defence industrial ministry — called the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (Costin) —would assign a factory to build the equipment. But when the factory got the blueprints, there was confusion because they had not been involved in the design.


“The Chinese leadership saw that this did not help the national interest; it only helped the defence industry. One of the first reforms was to overturn the power of Costin and allow the military a central role in overseeing the defence industry. If you don’t have end-users, particularly war fighters and the acquisitions community, playing a central role, then you’re not going to have innovation. If you’re just going to have industry administrators, then they are going to be looking just at their interests,” says Tai.

The result has been surging growth in the innovativeness of Chinese defence industry. In 1998, they filed for 313 patents. In 2008, it had gone up to 11,000 patents. In 2010, 15,000 patents were applied for.

India’s defence industry today mirrors its Chinese counterpart in 1998. The R&D element (the DRDO) functions separately from the manufacturing element (the defence PSUs). India’s military has little say, and no oversight, in what is researched and manufactured. And the Indian ministry of defence’s department of defence production is an accurate mirror image of China’s Costin, pushing back the innovative private sector to safeguard the interests of the state-owned enterprises."
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Pete