A base in the mountains

Guizhou Aviation Industry Group was founded in 1964 and became known as the 011 Base. Its factories were spread along the highways around Guiyang, Anshun and Pingba County in the mountains of Guizhou province. At its height it comprised 46 enterprises and institutes with 51,000 employees, 16,000 of them technical staff, including the Liyang aero-engine works and the Shuangyang aircraft factory, which by 2005 had built more than 1,100 aircraft. Its Yunma factory made buses and trucks, and a joint venture with Subaru built licence copies of the Rex and Vivio cars.

Mountain Eagle

Guizhou’s aircraft line grew out of the Chengdu J-7, China’s version of the MiG-21. It built the JJ-7 and export FT-7 two-seat fighter trainers, and from them developed the FTC-2000 Mountain Eagle, revealed in 2001 as a cheap lead-in trainer for fourth-generation fighters. As the JL-9 it went into production for the PLA Air Force and Navy alongside the more advanced Hongdu JL-10. A carrier-trainer variant, the JL-9G, proved unsuitable for arrested landings. The light-attack FTC-2000G entered mass production in 2018 and Myanmar ordered it in 2020.

Soaring Dragon

The group’s Liyang works builds turbojet and turbofan engines, including the WP-7B for the J-7 family and the WS-13, intended for the JF-17 and FC-31. Its most striking product is the WZ-7 Soaring Dragon, a high-altitude reconnaissance drone with a tandem joined wing, designed by Chengdu and built by Guizhou. A model was shown at Zhuhai in 2006; serial production followed in 2015–2016, and a redesigned version with a V-tail and WS-13 engine was publicly unveiled at the 2021 Zhuhai Airshow.

المصانع

• Anshun assembly line · Anshun, Guizhou — Reported JL-9 production site
• Liyang Aero-Engine Corporation · Guizhou — 10,000 employees; turbojet and turbofan engines
• Shuangyang Aircraft Manufactory · Guizhou — Established 1970