Across China, airports are being expanded, airline traffic is booming and civil aircraft development is moving ahead, but that seems to be not enough for Beijing, which is according the sector high priority in a new national five-year economic plan. Aircraft-building is included in seven industries that the plan has elevated to strategic significance, with specific mention of the importance of the Comac C919 narrowbody airliner program.

Hardly a month seems to go by without a new move by the Chinese aerospace industry to acquire critical know-how from Western competitors. The maneuvers have been increasing in number and perhaps in effectiveness—from encouraging, and later requiring, Western companies selling in China to work with Chinese partners, to Beijing’s state enterprises simply buying foreign companies that had key technology.

BEIJING — China is dramatically stepping up its efforts to procure Western know-how, with Avic’s commercial engine company, ACAE, launching a large-scale recruitment campaign in Britain and the U.S. to back its development of a narrowbody airliner turbofan. The drive to enlist foreign staff, in part focusing on experienced workers, is another manifestation of Chinese industry’s ability to wield national resources and the lure of market access in its quest for the knowledge it needs to rapidly catch up with Western aerospace leaders.