China has already surpassed russia, not only in terms of economics (china´s GDP is several times bigger than russia´s GDP and has twice the growth rate, if not more. Even Putin admit that china is in another league) but also in several tech areas (eletronics, consumer goods and even shipbuilding). the only areas where russia has a clear advantage is in the military, civilian aeronautics and nuclear power. But i think that its only a matter of time before china catches up in these areas.
This is not unsurprising, because china has ten times the population of russia, and its geography and population distribution is more suitable to economic development than russia.
If you keep it to per capita you have a different picture.
But anyway let us keep the conversation in aviation.
Russia and well as China have social programs, richer nations like Germany or England or even the US go for joint ventures to save money and speed up development.
To put you an example simple is LCA and J-10.
Both nations tried to build a light weight fighter, China went for a more practical way simple by fitting AL-31 from the begining, while India went for Kaveri but at the end LCA entered with F404s.
Same is Z-10 is possible China could have gone alone, but this would had meant longer development time, so this would had forced Z-10 to enter service later in the decade or almost during the 2020s or even more later.
By going with Kamov, the project entered operational service earlier, saved R&D time and money.
Here is common to claim the Russians are lying or people minimize their contribution, the reality is Russia has played a big part in the Chinese aviation development.
Embraer, Boeing, Lockheed Martin understand that very well, now even Sukhoi understand that, that globalization means joint ventures.
Joint ventures are good ways to reduce price and minizing risks for each partner; other option is outsourcing or simply building parts in a third country like some countries do.
