Chinese new regional jet

"Morgans" wrote:
Well, it has officially started.

China has rolled out a new jet that is a knockoff from an American
passenger jet.

From AvWeb:

Shenyang used much of the tooling left over from McDonnell-Douglas's
aborted attempt to build MD-90s in China and the "new" airplane has
the same cabin cross section and nose as the DC-9 family.

Does anyone have any doubt that China will copy any airplane that a
manufacturer decides to build there?

The story in question also states "According to United Press International,
the aircraft is the first-ever clean sheet airliner design by the Chinese."

Having the same cross section and nose as an entire family of aircraft is
mighty thin evidence to start claiming "knockoff".

Also, I'm pretty sure that U.S. corporations and governments have in
decades past ripped off design ideas when it suited them.

(Shucks, the U.S. sometimes doesn't just rip off designs but complete sets
of designers! Got a bunch of German rocket designers a few decades back.
And prior to that some airships and airship designs. Different wars, same
result: transfer of IP.)