Comment by lysace

The Chinese government has spent 18 years and an unknown amount of funds trying to compete:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac

They have delivered 185 aircraft to domestic airlines. Maybe Africa is next?

Note that they so far use engines from western companies - GE and Safran. In fact, the vast majority of their primary suppliers are from outside of China: https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinas-comac-a...

I guess it takes a bit of a war chest to get into this business simply because it isn't very easy.