Walk into any regional airport in America, and you’ll likely see a Cirrus aircraft on the tarmac. Sleek, American-made, often bearing the American flag. What you won’t see is the fine print: Cirrus Aircraft, the largest manufacturer of piston-powered general aviation planes in the United States, has been wholly owned since 2011 by a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the CCP’s primary aerospace and defense conglomerate.The same company that builds fighter jets, attack helicopters, and drones for the PLA now owns the most delivered piston aircraft in America. Call it what it is: a strategic acquisition, and Congress has been asleep at the controls.AVIC is not a typical foreign investor. It’s a creature of the Chinese state, overseen by Beijing’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and a cornerstone of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, a deliberate policy that channels civilian innovation into military applications. When AVIC buys an American aviation company, it isn’t merely buying revenue. It’s buying engineers, manufacturing expertise, FAA certifications, and a front-row seat inside the world’s most sophisticated aerospace ecosystem. In every meaningful sense, it’s an intelligence operation dressed in a business suit.
China’s quiet infiltration of US general aviation
China could remotely reprogram systems, feed false readings, or trigger a kill switch, making a plane “fall out of the sky like a brick.”
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