The mainland's top aviation experts have formed a think tank to offer guidance to government and industry players who seem to have lost their bearings in recent years over the development of home-grown passenger jets.
The Research Academy of Aviation Engineering, Technology, Development and Strategy was jointly launched on Sunday by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Beihang University in Beijing, with its headquarters next to the National Laboratory for Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Professor Huai Jinpeng, Beihang's president and a member of the think tank, said on the university's website that it would seek to emulate the role of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a US federal agency that shaped the American aviation industry during the second world war and later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).
A few years ago, mainland leaders vowed to break the global dominance of Western manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus in aviation, and the central government has poured tens of billions of yuan into 'national key projects' since then with the aim of seeing Chinese jumbo jets in the sky before 2015.
However, the arrival of the Airbus A380 Superjumbo and Boeing 787 Dreamliner raised doubts about the Chinese industry's ability to compete, its technological reliability and its development road map.
Industry and Information Technology Minister Miao Wei said the government would ask the think tank to draw up a blueprint for the mainland's aviation industry for the next two decades.
