8ak note: Defence news has a report on JH-7 fighter production and combined with a few other reports makes for an exciting story about China's failed tech-piracy and Rolls Royce exporting engines in contradiciton of a weapons embargo.
StrategyPage: The JH-7 entered service a decade ago, although only about a hundred were built. Additional production was delayed because the aircraft was designed to use a British engine (the Spey 202), which was not supposed to be going to China after the 1989 embargo. But Rolls Royce, the manufacturer quietly continued exporting some engines, and technical assistance. China thought it could reverse-engineer this engine, but was unable to do so. China made peace with Rolls Royce over this abortive bit of tech piracy.
News (Pak): Jean-Paul Bechat, president of Snecma, was quoted as saying that his company was having regular discussions with the Chinese authorities about the possibility of fitting the M53 engine to a variant of the JH-7 aircraft. The M53 powers the French Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft. Another Snecma official familiar with the Asian market was quoted as saying that discussions with China had so far centred on the technical feasibility of replacing the JH-7’s existing engine with the “slightly more powerful” M53.
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