Originally Posted by mikeg
My reason for thinking this is that the design and construction of the HE90 can be carefully studied by a competent manufacturer (e.g., in China), and then it should be possible to closely duplicate its design and construction. I think that this is called reverse engineering. In any case, since the Chinese have successfully duplicated many of the West's rocket, computer, and weapons technology, it should be fairly easy for some Chinese firm to do the same with the 20+ year-old technology of the HE90.
Oh boy, don't make me laugh on this one. They can't even duplicate 2nd rate Soviet technology let alone 1st line Western stuff. They can't make the engines for Vietnam era Soviet jet fighters since they don't have the materials technology, they can't even make & refine the alloys which go into those engines, nor can they machine them to the required tolerances.
Computers. Do they have a single chip fab that can crank out say, a Pentium IV CPU? Or the last couple generations of GeForce and Radeon GPUs? Nope. They have factories for assembling graphics cards and so forth, but anyone can shell out a few million bucks for Universal and Siemens SMT machines and do that. Which brings me to the next point, they can't even make those machines, they can't duplicate them even if they wanted to.
They don't have the machines which make the machines to make goods. The infrastructure and tech base isn't there. Think of a pyramid with the product you're trying to build at the top. Everything you need to build that product is under it, and has to be there in order for you to succeed. The Chinese don't have it, not even close.