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Even as China struggles with daunting financial and demographic problems, it has been going from strength to strength technologically. The No. 2 economy dominates solar-energy and electric-vehicle supply chains. It struck back in electronics with the latest Huawei phone powered by domestic 7-nanometer semiconductors.

Now comes civil aviation’s turn, Beijing claims. The C919—state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China’s would-be midrange answer to Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’ A-320—lately bagged its first big order, for 100 planes, from China Eastern Airlines-1.38%.

“The C919 is expected to break the market duopoly of Boeing and Airbus,” the official China Daily crowed.

Not quite. The C919 is no match for the established workhorses of the sky. “From a design perspective, it can’t hold a candle to the 737 or A-320,” says Scott Kennedy, senior adviser in Chinese economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Even if it could, Comac, as the manufacturer is known, will need years if not decades more to gear up production. “Airbus or Boeing can produce 100 airplanes a month,” says Scott Hamilton, founder of aerospace consultant Leeham. “The C919 is lucky to produce two.”

The new aircraft also needs safety certifications outside China to fly internationally, its logical role with a 3,500-mile range. That won’t happen overnight either, says Shukor Yusof, founder of Malaysia-based consultant Endau Analytics.

“The plane has to clock hours and meet stringent tests,” he says. “They can’t overcome these hurdles in a short space of time.”

The C919’s emergence is still bad news for Boeing (ticker: BA). The U.S. giant reaped a quarter of its sales from China in better days, Hamilton says. Washington’s trade war has slowed that to a trickle.

Airbus (AIR.France) has practiced more effective diplomacy. CEO Guillaume Faury tagged along on French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Beijing in April and announced a new assembly line at the company’s Tianjin factory. That’s probably one reason Airbus’ stock has nearly regained prepandemic levels, while Boeing’s is down 40%.

The C919 may not hold a candle to the 737 in an open market. But China, which will probably order thousands of new planes this decade, is hardly an open market. The top three airlines are state-owned and will ultimately buy what the government tells them to. Beijing may also “arm-twist” regional tourist destinations like Indonesia or Thailand into early certification and orders for the C919, Shukor says.

That’s only half the politics involved. Some 70% of the C919’s components come from Western suppliers, including U.S. industrial icons such as General Electric (GE), which makes the engines jointly with France’s Safran (SAF.France); Honeywell International (HON), which provides wheels and brakes; and navigation from Rockwell Collins (COL).

The U.S. Defense Department included Comac on a potential sanctions list in the last days of the Trump administration. Successor Joe Biden has left the C919 supply chain intact. That’s a good call, CSIS’ Kennedy says, with little chance that well-known civilian technology could advance China’s military planes. “I haven’t heard anyone from the military say the C919 is a threat,” he says.

Washington’s dovish stance also keeps the door open for Chinese rapprochement with Boeing.

Building airplanes is the ultimate industrial long game, and China is determined to master it, eventually. “It took 40 years for Airbus to reach parity with Boeing,” Hamilton says. “China will be viable in another generation or two.”

Until then, it’s complicated.

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Former president faces backlash from Biden, GOP 2024 rivals

Former President Donald Trump is facing criticism from Democrats and Republicans for remarks in a campaign speech in which he characterized the militant group Hezbollah as “very smart” and faulted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a 2020 mission that killed an Iranian military leader.

It was the latest example of the former president and current 2024 Republican front-runner making controversial comments related to foreign policy and leaders, even as he also vowed that if re-elected, the U.S. would support Israel in “defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group, Hamas.”

More than 1,300 Israelis have been killed since the Hamas assault began over the weekend, leading to a fierce Israeli military response. At least 25 U.S. citizens have died. Gaza officials say more than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and another 6,600 have been injured.

President Biden highlighted Trump’s comments as wrongheaded. “Our nation’s support for Israel is resolute and unwavering. And the right time to praise the terrorists who seek to destroy them is never,” he said Thursday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, linking to a video clip of Trump’s remarks Wednesday night.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rival of Trump’s for the GOP nomination, wrote: “It is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.’ ”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who also is competing for the GOP nomination, said Thursday on a New Hampshire radio program, “This is no time for the former president or any other American leader to be sending any message other than America stands with Israel.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump’s most persistent detractor on the campaign trail, said on CNN: “Only a fool would give comments that could give aid and comfort to Israel’s adversary in this situation.”

Trump appeared Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Fla., before a group of supporters known as Club 47 USA.

“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Trump said, recounting how he once took heat for describing Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “very smart man.” Trump has made similar comments about the intelligence or strength of Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

A Trump spokesman said Thursday that Trump was “clearly pointing out how incompetent Biden and his administration were by telegraphing to the terrorists an area that is susceptible to an attack.”

In the speech, Trump boasted of his efforts to support Israel. But he also criticized Netanyahu, saying the Israeli leader “let us down” in a U.S. mission that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Trump said Israel helped work on the plan for months. “We had everything all set to go, and the night before it happened, I got a call that Israel will not be participating in this attack,” Trump said, explaining to the audience that “nobody’s heard this story before.”

“They’ve got to strengthen themselves up,” Trump said of Israel.

In a Fox News Radio interview Thursday, Trump said Netanyahu wasn’t prepared for Hamas’s attack.

“He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared. And under Trump, they wouldn’t have to be prepared,” Trump said. “Who would have thought their intelligence wouldn’t have been able to pick this up. Thousands of people were involved. Thousands of people knew about it and they let this slip by. That was not a good thing for him or for anybody.”

Some commenters, including a group supporting DeSantis’s presidential bid, linked Trump’s comments to his anger over the Israeli leader for making a congratulatory call to Biden after the 2020 election—one Trump continues to falsely claim was rigged and stolen.

While not addressing his controversial comments, Trump Thursday night in a social-media post said that Israel had “no better friend or ally.” He singled out the so-called Abraham Accords, brokered by the U.S. during his administration and signed by the U.S., Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, normalizing relations between the nations. In the same post, he criticized President Biden for his handling of issues that Trump said “emboldened our enemies.”

Debt-laden satellite company alleges Pentagon improperly denied its use of spectrum for 5G networks

Long-struggling satellite company Ligado Networks sued the U.S. over spectrum rights it has been unable to use, alleging that the Defense Department and Commerce Department blocked its business plans through a “highly orchestrated public disinformation campaign.”

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, seeks to recover as much as $39 billion as compensation for property that Ligado says was wrongly denied. The complaint comes as the company stares down about $4 billion of November bond payments.

The company has also been in talks with creditors. Ligado, previously known as LightSquared, emerged from bankruptcy in 2015 and has flirted with financial disaster over the years as it worked to secure its spectrum rights.

Ligado alleged Thursday that the Pentagon and Commerce Department used a false pretext to deny its use of wireless spectrum licenses it would otherwise be allowed to commercialize.

A Pentagon spokesperson said the department doesn’t comment on litigation. A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment.

Federal officials at both departments have for years said that Ligado’s planned fifth-generation wireless signals could interfere with the use of the Global Positioning System.

Ligado’s lawsuit said that the Pentagon instead claimed all of Ligado’s spectrum in a frequency range known as the L-band for undisclosed activities other than GPS without telling other regulators or members of Congress.

The Pentagon’s weapons and communications programs, many of them classified, often use radio frequencies that are unavailable for civilian use.

“High ranking U.S. government officials have acted deliberately to deprive an American company of its rightfully licensed property,” Ligado Chairman Ivan Seidenberg said in a statement. “The government must be held accountable for these actions.”

A group of Filipino workers filed suit against Jacobs Solutions, which oversaw construction of 2022 World Cup stadiums

More than three dozen Filipino construction workers who helped build the multibillion-dollar stadiums hosting last year’s World Cup in Qatar have sued the U.S.-based company that oversaw their construction, alleging it violated human trafficking laws and knowingly participated in an exploitative venture.

The civil complaint, filed Thursday in a U.S. District Court in Denver, alleges construction-services firm Jacobs Solutions and its subsidiaries illegally profited from their participation in a decadelong project that relied on forced and trafficked labor to build the tournament’s facilities from scratch.

The suit details a litany of alleged abuses against the plaintiffs, including confiscated passports, requirements to work 36 or 72 hours straight, crowded housing, limited water in extreme heat, insufficient food and limited access to medical care.

“Our clients allege they were exploited and abused, that they were convinced to go to Qatar based on lies, and that they were coerced to work despite being denied humane living and working conditions,” said Eli Kay-Oliphant, a lawyer at Sparacino, one of the law firms representing the laborers.

Jacobs said it had not yet had the opportunity to thoroughly review the allegations but was “committed to respecting the human rights and dignity of those within our operations and where we do business.” CH2M Hill initially secured the contract to oversee the Qatari construction projects. Jacobs acquired the firm in 2017.

A representative for Qatar couldn’t immediately be reached to comment.

The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which targets forced labor, involuntary servitude and other forms of human trafficking.

The act allows a victim to sue perpetrators of the abuse, even if their involvement was limited to participation in a venture that involved human trafficking, if they knew or should have known about the exploitation.

Qatar has long been criticized for relying on the exploitative kafala sponsorship system to recruit migrant workers for its booming, ambitious construction industry. These laborers are often underpaid, overworked and housed in squalid conditions, and employers regularly confiscate workers’ passports for the term of their contracts, according to a report by the U.S. State Department.

The plaintiffs took employment contracts with subcontractors at the World Cup construction sites in Qatar for mostly two- to three-year stretches between 2012 and 2021, according to the suit. During that period, CH2M, later Jacobs, and relevant subsidiaries were responsible for managing the work operations and employed “health and safety managers” and other advisory positions, tasked with site visits to monitor safety standards to contract requirements, according to the suit.

Human-rights groups estimated deaths on the World Cup job sites likely reached into the thousands, a number Qatar disputes. In 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation used statistics from foreign embassies and the country’s medical ministry to estimate that 1,200 migrant laborers, most of them from South Asia, had died in three years while building projects mostly tied to the World Cup.

Qatari leaders in statements last year touted modernization efforts and reforms that included a raise of minimum wages and food or housing allowances, although international watchdog groups say the new laws have had meager implementation.