January 5, 2026
SINGAPORE – The year 2025 was supposed to be a big one for Chinese aircraft manufacturer Comac.
With more than 1,000 of its C919 passenger planes on order, the state-backed jet maker had pledged to ramp up production of the home-grown jetliner – Beijing’s answer to the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 Max.
Executives said in March 2025 that Comac would deliver up to 75 planes by the end of the year, up from an initial target of 50.
However, by September 2025, the annual delivery target was slashed to 25, and Comac ended the year well short – shipping only 13 C919 jets, according to a Dec 24 Bloomberg report.
The shortfall laid bare a central vulnerability in China’s commercial aviation ambitions: its reliance on Western-made aircraft engines.
An unsteady flow of aircraft parts, including engines that were subject to a two-month export ban earlier in the year, was cited as a reason for Comac’s faltering output, underscoring how exposed the programme remains to overseas suppliers.
It is also why China has, since 2016, been racing to develop its own domestic commercial jet engine to free itself of Western dependence and assert greater aerospace sovereignty.
While public updates have been scant, the CJ-1000A aircraft engine, developed by state-owned aerospace company Aero Engine Corporation of China (AECC), is said to be on the cusp of completing airworthiness certification – the regulatory approval required before an engine can be used on commercial passenger flights – after more than two years of test flights.
Getting the nod from China’s civil aviation authority would pave the way for the Chinese engine, which is named after the Yangtze river – Chang Jiang in Mandarin – to be installed on the C919 plane for commercial use.
The engine would replace the Leap-1Cs that power the C919s today, which are supplied by CFM International – a joint venture between US manufacturer GE Aerospace and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines.
The most recent hint of the CJ-1000A’s progress was given in August 2025 by Chinese Academy of Engineering member Zhang Yanzhong, a key figure in China’s aerospace push.
“The current progress is very positive. As for when it will be installed on Chinese aircraft – just wait for the good news,” he told state broadcaster CCTV.
Aviation analysts, however, cautioned that China remains far from achieving jet-engine self-sufficiency and loosening its reliance on Western suppliers.
Mr Mayur Patel, head of commercial and industry affairs for Asia-Pacific at aviation data consultancy OAG Aviation, told The Straits Times that domestic certification and initial deliveries for the CJ-1000A engine were more likely to happen in 2027 or 2028.
Mass production is expected around 2030, while international certification remains years away.
Mr Li Hanming, an independent expert on Chinese aviation, noted that the CJ-1000A has been used as a second engine on the Xi’an Y-20 military transport plane as part of testing, and the results are said to have exceeded initial projections.
But integrating the CJ-1000A with the Comac C919 would be more complex, requiring a redesign of the aircraft’s engine control system, the US-based analyst told ST.
“The way to a production-ready engine is still long, and I would not say that it has finished,” he added.
Mr Li said AECC has experience designing military jet engines, but the company still has a lot to learn on the commercial front.
He noted that military jet engines are used less often, maintained more frequently, burn more fuel, and can afford to fail; whereas commercial engines are expected to prioritise safety, require less maintenance and save fuel, among other requirements.
While the C919 jet plane, which made its domestic debut in 2023 and international debut in Singapore in 2024 , has been grabbing headlines, the development of the CJ-1000A engine has been equally key and closely watched.
Domestic engine development was listed among China’s strategic goals in the 14th Five-Year Plan – from 2021 to 2025 – and features in the “Made in China 2025” industrial masterplan.
China’s resolve to develop its own line of commercial aircraft engines has also been strengthened after past instances of Western export controls putting a stranglehold on its aviation ambitions.
In 2020, a decades-long project to develop a regional propeller plane, the Xi’an MA700, was left in limbo after Canada refused to issue an export licence to engine supplier Pratt and Whitney amid deteriorating bilateral ties.
More recently, in May 2025, the Trump administration suspended the sale of Leap-1C aircraft engines to China amid a tit-for-tat trade war.
While the sales ban was lifted in July 2025, the ripple effects continued to be felt despite Comac building up a stockpile of engines and other key components.
The hurdles facing China go beyond geopolitics. Analysts noted that the barrier to entry for commercial jet engine manufacturing is especially high.
In a review of the Made in China 2025 policy, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission pointed out that while many countries – including China – have developed quality military jet engines, only three global companies produce commercial jet engines.
They are GE Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney, and Britain’s Rolls-Royce. All three are based in the West.
The high stakes have also fuelled accusations of industrial espionage. In 2021, a Chinese intelligence officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison over a plot to steal trade secrets related to GE Aerospace’s engines.
Mr Patel and Mr Li said that the hardest technical barrier for China to overcome is the manufacturing of advanced materials.
“Turbine blades must withstand 1,600 deg C temperatures and forces of 10 to 30 tonnes for thousands of hours. China struggles with consistent production of single-crystal superalloys and ceramic matrix composites at scale,” Mr Patel said.
Still, some analysts believe success is ultimately a matter of time.
Aviation analyst Shukor Yusof, founder of Endau Analytics, said that while China’s CJ-1000A programme has stuttered, it is a question of when, not if, the country will produce a safe and reliable jet engine.
“The Chinese are relatively new in this game and didn’t have a head start in aerospace engineering compared with the Americans, Europeans or even the Russians,” he added.
“When China starts making its own engines, they control the future of both their commercial aviation and military paths.”
Others remain sceptical about the outcome.
Mr Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aerospace consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, said there are questions about whether the CJ-1000A will be as reliable as its Western equivalents, and how quickly the three major Western manufacturers can launch even better engines.
“The start of flight testing means exactly nothing,” said Mr Aboulafia. “These (questions) will determine whether this is a real, commercially viable engine, or just a kind of emergency backup device in the event China is cut off from Western engine exports.”
The consultant also noted that developing a completely indigenous aircraft engine is anomalous in the aerospace world, and the only other country to have tried it was the Soviet Union – to ultimately dismal results.
“All other engines involve technologies and capital crossing borders… Will China get different results from following the same Soviet formula? I tend to doubt it,” he added.