Military

A note of caution is required when contemplating the outburst of armament creativity on display at the annual Zhuhai Air Show in recent years. Zhuhai is after all a marketing operation. It is fairly easy for a Chinese corporation to fabricate a display model of a munition for an arms show - sometimes with Chinese characteristics, often not - that replicates some recently disclosed American weapon. International customers are, after all, more likely to buy a knock-off copy of some combat proven American system than some weird off-brand CHICOM system that has never seen combat. It is quite another to build operative hardware, and to test that hardware to the point that it may be introduced into the combat inventory. Much of the Zhuhai toy show must be regarded as aspirational rather than operational, until proven otherwise. Given all the missiles peddled by Norinco and Poly Defence, it is evident that Chinese state-owned enterprises have way too many sophisticated weapons chasing far too few customers, both at home and abroad, creating a glut in the arms market.