This Day, That Year

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

In 1985, the high-wing twin-engine turboprop utility aircraft Y-12, built by Harbin Aircraft Industry Group, received Chinese certification.

An item from Nov 25 that year in China Daily showed workers assembling the aircraft. It has a lifting capacity of about 1,800 kilograms and a maximum speed of 328 kilometers per hour.

Since its rollout in the 1980s, the Y-12 has been exported to more than 20 countries and regions in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Xinhua News Agency reported.

In 2014, China exported 20 Y-12s to a California-based company. They were the first passenger airplanes sold by a Chinese company into the United States.

The delivery reflected a growing market for Chinese aircraft in the US, where industry standards are high, analysts said.

In 2015, Y-12s were certified as airworthy by Russia's aviation watchdog. The move gave the aircraft access to airports in Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The same year, the Chinese aviation sector also began to raise its standards for fasteners used in civil aircraft, a move essential to the country's ambitious plans to export jetliners, aviation specialists said.

Authorities also rolled out a "Made in China 2025" initiative to boost the competitiveness of its manufacturing sector, including the aviation industry.

Following the success of the Y-12, the country has successfully developed and produced jets domestically, including the ARJ21, which rolled off the assembly line in Shanghai in 2007, and a homegrown large passenger plane, the C919, which took to the air in Shanghai in 2017. The twin-engine, single-aisle C919 is comparable to the updated Airbus 320 and Boeing's new generation 737 aircraft.