Boeing’s first engineer came from China. Now it hires mostly from India

[Nan Yang]

Boeing has more job openings for engineers in India than in China amid a general distancing of US firms from Chinese talent. Photo: Reuters
ChinaScience

Boeing’s first engineer came from China. Now it hires mostly from India​

• US aerospace giant Boeing is hiring significantly more engineers in India than China, as the US reduces its dependence on Chinese talent

Victoria Bela
Published: 11:00pm, 1 Aug 2024

Boeing is hiring nearly 20 times more engineers in India than in China, as the United States seeks to lessen its dependence on Chinese talent amid geopolitical concerns.

As of Wednesday, five jobs were available in China on the Boeing Careers site, three of which were for engineering roles.

Meanwhile, India had 83 job openings, with 58 for engineering roles – equating to 19 times more available engineering roles in India than in China. That gap has remained in the same region for at least a couple of weeks.

According to Boeing, which is struggling through one of its biggest safety and management crises for decades, it has around 2,200 employees in China, and more than 6,000 in India, where the size of the country’s total commercial aviation fleet is about a sixth of China’s.

Many top US companies have India in their sights, as the nation becomes a growing hub for American companies looking to diversify their manufacturing base away from China.

Recent comments from a senior US official about recruiting more Indian students over Chinese students for STEM majors also indicate the country is not only looking to India to build its new factories, but for its scientific talent as well.

Yet China’s engineering expertise is part of what helped Boeing achieve a duopoly – along with Europe’s Airbus – over global aircraft manufacturing.

In 1916, Boeing hired Beijing-born Wong Tsu as the company’s first aeronautical engineer, following his graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Wong played a crucial role in designing the company’s first financially successful plane – the Model C naval training seaplane. This paved the way for Boeing to build its first dedicated passenger plane around a decade later.

Since the 1970s, the US aerospace giant has also had close ties with China, opening multiple joint ventures in China including engineering, maintenance and research centres, as well as a 737 completion and delivery centre.

But in response to a query from the Post about whether more technical roles could be expected in China in the future, a communications representative for Boeing China said they did not disclose the company’s future hiring plans in China or elsewhere.

It has been a turbulent time for the company, after deadly crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019 saw Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft grounded and the Boeing brand crumble.

This month, the company resumed delivery of the 737 Max to China after changes were made to fix the safety issues.

But it may be too late. Despite the manufacturer receiving a green light from authorities, China has now fired up its own home-grown passenger jet – the C919 – as the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) attempts to grab market share away from Boeing and Airbus.

Over the next two decades, China is gearing up to become the world’s largest aviation market, with the 2024 Boeing Commercial Market Outlook released in July projecting the country will require 8,830 aircraft deliveries by 2043.

But along with continuous safety concerns over their aircraft, and political and trade tensions between the US and China – Boeing may be turning elsewhere to grow its engineering and design capabilities.

India has been courting US companies hoping to break away from their reliance on China as a technology and manufacturing base. Now it is lending its own talent to the aviation firm.

In January, Boeing opened its largest facility outside the US in Bengaluru, investing around US$200 million into the Boeing India Engineering and Technology Centre (BIETC).

At the centre’s inauguration, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “Given that there is so much potential in India, we need to rapidly build an aircraft manufacturing ecosystem in the country.”

China’s Comac is busy creating its own passenger jets, including this model of the C929 displayed at the Singapore Airshow earlier this year. Photo: AFP

Meanwhile, Salil Gupta, president of Boeing India, told Forbes India last year: “The Indian market is an opportunity like no other, not just because of the opportunity to serve civil aviation and defence customers, but also because of the capability to support aerospace globally – both in engineering and manufacturing.”

Most Boeing jobs available in India are located in Bengaluru.

South Asia, driven by India’s growing civil aviation market, will require the delivery of 2,835 aircraft by 2043, which will quadruple its existing fleet. India is now the third-largest domestic airline market in the world, behind the US and China.

Amitendu Palit, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, said the first reason for Boeing’s greater presence in India was its rapidly expanding aviation market and demand for aircraft.

The second was the pursuit of “China plus one”, a strategy that aims to diversify business away from China.

“India and the US are collaborating extensively on defence and technology, along with many other areas, including aerospace. [Boeing’s] greater role in India matches this idea of collaboration,” Palit said, pointing out that Airbus was also expanding its presence in India.

“India is expected to emerge as a hub in aerospace manufacturing given its domestic demand, gradual growth as an aviation service hub for the Indo-Pacific, and a convenient location, other than China, for third-country exports.”

In an interview with Shenzhen TV in May, Boeing China president Liu Qing said that Boeing regarded China as a top market priority, citing the country’s rising need for aircraft over the next two decades.

But the Boeing China representative did not comment on whether meeting future aircraft demand in the country would involve expanding the company’s employee base and presence within China.

Boeing was introduced to the Chinese aviation market in the early 1970s, following a visit by then-US president Richard Nixon.

More than 10,000 Boeing planes around the world have had parts and assemblies that were built in China, with the company even forming joint ventures with Comac to build the 737 Completion and Delivery Centre in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province.

As China’s domestic aircraft manufacturing is still in its early stages despite the growing demand for planes, China has even turned to Airbus over Boeing to supply its new fleet, edging Boeing out of its market share.

The embattled US aircraft manufacturer is still trying to recover from the damage its name has suffered in recent years.

On top of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, a string of incidents have continued to call into question the safety of Boeing planes. These incidents include wheels falling off one plane and a panel blowing off mid-air on a 737 Max aircraft, leaving a gaping hole in the cabin.

After the two crashes saw the 737 Max aircraft grounded worldwide, issues were revealed in its software.

A report from Bloomberg in 2019 stated that the company had outsourced coding for Max software to temporary workers to cut costs – particularly from India.

A former Boeing software engineer told Bloomberg that the company had hired recent college graduates from Indian companies to work on coding, who helped develop and test software for flight displays and flight-testing equipment.

In response, Boeing said that the Indian engineers hired did not work on software for systems that had been linked to the fatal 737 Max crashes.

While China’s domestic passenger flow currently ranks third in the world under North America and Europe, it is projected to take the top spot by 2043, according to the Boeing outlook.

Passenger flow in South Asia is also expected to rise from its current 14th place to seventh place in 2043, as the region now has the fastest growing civil aviation market in the world.