China’s Arms Export Model

Another sector that should be significantly impacted by theglobal economic downturn is the international arms market, where tighter budgets will favorreverse-engineered knockoffs like the newly marketed Chinese HQ-9 surface-to-air missile: To the extent that China enjoys export successes, it will depend oncustomers who are looking for high mid-range air defense performance ata low to mid-range price. That pretty much sums up the Chinese arms export model. This particular system is basically a not-so-bad Russian S-300 for less money. That might not havemade for a very tempting sales pitch a year ago, but my hunch is thatit won’t sound half-bad for […]