There's a new player at Australia's biggest airshow: China

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This was published 7 years ago

There's a new player at Australia's biggest airshow: China

By David Wroe
Updated

Amid the big US and European defence giants there is a new presence at the Avalon Airshow: China.

For the first time, Chinese firms are at Australia's aviation megashow - one of the world's major defence and aerospace events - in what is being seen as the first steps of an export push, and one being watched closely by security analysts.

Xiang Meng at the Australian international Air Show.

Xiang Meng at the Australian international Air Show.Credit: Joe Armao

The firms include a branch of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China - the nation's defence and aerospace behemoth that makes most of its air force hardware - and a division of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation that makes rockets to launch satellites into orbit.

Australia's Defence Department won't deal with Chinese firms on anything significant. But four years after Canberra slapped a ban on the Chinese firm Huawei's involvement in the NBN, China hopes to make inroads in other areas of aviation and aerospace that can overlap with defence.

Xiang Meng, division chief of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, which had the most substantial of the Chinese displays at Avalon, said his firm was looking to sell its services to Australian companies that wanted to launch smaller satellites for purposes such as taking images for research or agriculture.

Using a Chinese firm to launch bigger satellites was "forbidden by the Americans", he said.

Mr Meng's firm actually launched Optus' first satellite in the early 1990s, but since then the US has tightened the rules so that any satellite containing American technology - which larger satellites such as those for telecommunications tend to do - cannot be launched by a Chinese firm.

Two senior executives from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China met with the South Australia's Defence Teaming Centre and some of the firms they represent, though they did not discuss defence issues but rather civil commercial opportunities. Many defence firms also do civilian work.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Malcolm Davis said Australia needs to be cautious about any Chinese export push into sensitive fields such as aerospace.

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Launching an Australian satellite for instance would allow a Chinese firm to "usefully study it", creating the risk the technology would be copied.

"There's an interest for them to attend all of these shows across Asia because they're also serving a political and national purpose which is to promote the fact that China's a rising power."

He said that another reason for the Chinese presence was almost certainly to get a close look at key assets being unveiled such as the new radar-jamming Growler aircraft.

Toh Tian Lai, a Singapore-based travel agent who helped through a Beijing partner to organise the Chinese presence at Avalon, said he hoped to double the size of its attendance at the next show. He said the Chinese government was not involved.

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"The Chinese don't have this myopic view that because you are friends of the Americans you are enemies," he said. "They are trying to reach out to the world for investment."

Avalon Airshow executive director Greg Ferguson said it made sense for Chinese civilian aviation companies to attend Avalon because it was a growing industry in China that created opportunities for Australian firms. Chinese companies realistically knew they had little prospect of selling defence equipment in Australia, he said.

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