Established in 1951, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) is China’s largest aviation enterprise, responsible for producing essentially all of China’s domestic military aircraft, UAVs, and helicopters, as well as a wide range of civilian aircraft and other aviation and non-aviation products and services. From a U.S. perspective, AVIC can be thought of as if Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Sikorsky, at least parts of Boeing and Raytheon, and essentially all other domestic aviation companies were all subsidiaries of a single corporation, which also was heavily invested in automobiles, commodities, insurance, finance, and a range of other schemes. As of 2022, AVIC employs 386,000 personnel, has total assets valued at $185 billion, total operating income of $77.8 billion, and annual net profits of $2.5 billion. It oversees 33 scientific research institutes, nine national key laboratories, 30 aviation technology key laboratories, 24 nationally recognized enterprise technology centers, and 32 provincial and ministerial enterprise technology centers. It has hundreds of subsidiaries in all provincial-level divisions of China, along with more than a hundred overseas entities. It is highly connected to international aviation companies. Its many subsidiaries have joint ventures, foreign acquisitions, licensed manufacturing agreements, production and maintenance agreements, and other forms of cooperation with companies across the world, including Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, Safran, Goodrich, Sikorsky, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, UTC, GE, and Honeywell. All of this serves to make AVIC both China’s first or second largest defense company by overall revenues, the second largest defense company in the world by overall revenues, and the sixth or eighth largest defense company in the world by defense revenues.
This report maps out AVIC’s organization and corporate structure, as well as providing extensive information on its component parts. Splitting AVIC into six core competencies, it includes profiles of AVIC and over 170 of its subsidiary companies, factories, and research institutes. Where found, these profiles include information on these subsidiaries’ products and services, history, size, funding, aliases, collaborations, personnel, and infrastructure. While not 100% comprehensive (as AVIC has countless other minor subsidiaries unrelated to its core defense and aviation businesses), this report aims to provide the most detailed view of AVIC’s organization available in open sources, shining light on the inner workings of one of China’s largest and most complex state-owned defense conglomerates.
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