Moscow prostitutes itself to China (again)

(Moscow) Yesterday, Russia inked a deal with China in which to sell 35 of its latest Su-35 jets and 4 of its latest (Lada) submarines. What makes this deal even more surprising is that of late, Russia has complained about how China has gone onto illegally copy the arms it has bought from Russia and put them up for sale in competition with the real thing. Yet with the evidence staring them plainly in the face, the Russians have gone and sold them their latest military equipment.

However, this isn't as it seems. the Chinese already build and field their own version of the Su-27 (J-11) which is supposed to be much more capable than the original, and they have upgraded even that with the J-16. So if the Chinese already produce an aircraft just as good as the ones they have just purchased from Russia, why have they done so? It all has to do with the power plant. Whilst China has managed to drag itself up by the bootstraps when it comes to becoming a modern manufacturing nation, the one area it still lags behind everybody else is in the manufacturing of jet engines. Oh, it can make them, it just hasn't mastered the finer art of knocking out really efficient high performance jet engines. This kind of explains why over the past 3 years China has purchased over 500 jet engines from Russia. The thing is, while Russia is happy to continue to prostate itself before China for a quick ruble, it won't be long before the Chinese say No Mas.

Meanwhile, the bBC reports this story as how these two victims are ganging up in which to combat the nasty evil USA.