A bomber that refuses to retire

Somewhere over the western Pacific, Japanese or South Korean fighters scramble to shadow a formation of Chinese bombers flying alongside Russian Tu-95s. The Chinese aircraft are H-6s, and their basic design flew in the Soviet Union in 1952. Since 2019 these joint patrols have become a regular event, and every one of the Chinese bombers involved was built in the same place: the Xi’an Aircraft Industrial Corporation at Yanliang, an hour outside the old imperial capital. No factory has kept a 1950s bomber design in production for so long, and XAC is still building new versions.

Soviet kits and a lost decade

The company was founded in 1958, the year China took delivery of its first Tupolev Tu-16s. Under a licence signed in September 1957, Moscow supplied two complete aircraft, knock-down kits and raw materials from Plant No. 22 in Kazan. Harbin assembled the first Chinese Tu-16 in 67 days in 1959, but in 1961 production was concentrated at Xi’an. Then came the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, which cost the programme years and some of its drawings. The first fully home-built H-6 did not fly until 24 December 1968. Nine of China’s nuclear test devices were dropped from H-6s over Lop Nur.

The Flying Leopard

XAC’s first design of its own was born from a war on the other side of the world. A large two-seat strike aircraft, comparable to the Tornado or Su-24, had drifted for years until the Falklands War of 1982 showed what aircraft could do against ships. The naval JH-7 became the priority, powered by licence-built Rolls-Royce Spey engines. It first flew on 14 December 1988, ending in an emergency landing after vibration knocked out its instruments. It entered service in 1994, earned the name Flying Leopard, and about 270 were built by 2018.

Chubby Girl

The Y-20 is the aircraft that announced a new XAC. Work began in July 2007, the prototype flew on 26 January 2013, and service entry followed in July 2016. Officially it is the Kunpeng, after a giant fish-bird of Taoist myth; inside the Chinese industry it is the Chubby Girl, because its fuselage is far wider than anything China had built before. The design team made model-based digital definition compulsory for every supplier, and claims it cut wing installation from a month or more to a few hours. About 100 had been built by 2026.

Fins for Boeing, airliners for the world

Not everything has gone smoothly. The MA60 turboprop airliner, descended from a licence-built Antonov An-24, has never sought American or European certification. A Merpati MA60 crashed into the sea off West Papua in May 2011 with everyone on board killed, and in 2013 New Zealand suspended tourism aid to Tonga and warned travellers off an MA60 China had donated there. Yet the same factory has made more than 3,000 vertical fins for Boeing’s 737 and the inboard flaps for the 747-8, the largest single structure Boeing buys from China. Ahead lies the H-20 stealth bomber.

工厂

• Yanliang works · Yanliang district, Xi’an, Shaanxi — Main plant and headquarters since 1958; reconstructed for H-6 production

人们

• Chen Yijian · chief designer — Chief designer of the JH-7 from 1982
• Tang Changhong · chief designer — Designer of the Y-20
• Lü Hai · general designer — General designer of the MA60 series
• Li Yuanyi · test pilot — Flew the first fully Chinese-built H-6 on 24 December 1968, with Xu Wenhong

纪录和第一

• H-6 remains in production more than 70 years after the Tu-16 design first flew
• Y-20 is the largest military aircraft built in China
• Y-20 claimed as the first cargo aircraft to use 3D-printed parts, per Chinese media