Another famous Chinese aircraft manufacturer is Hongdu (formerly the needless-definition Nanchang from 1951 till 1998).
The production plant was founded in 1951 which is located in Nanchang city the capital of Jiangxi eastern province.
Nanchang gained its fame from the Q-5 Fantan, which for years together with the J-7 symbolized the slogan of PLAAF.
The design was derived from the Mig-19 to comply to the PLAAF's requirements to build a ground attack aircraft for air support role.
Production of this model began in 1965 with more than 1000 units built, in 1980s A-5 (export variant) found its way to air forces of many nations as Pakistan and North Korea.
Aside the Q-5, Nanchang focused on producing trainers for PLAAF so in late 1940s it produced the license-built Yak-18 under the designation of CJ-5; Around 380 units built till 1958.
In 1958 a program was launched to build a more advanced trainer with improved performance to replace the CJ-5, the result was CJ-6 with more than 3000 units built and successful record in export market.
Another joint cooperation effort between China and Pakistan to build jet advanced trainer resulted the JL-8 (K-8 Karakorum export variant) which development began in early 1990s.
Although it was designed and produced mainly for PAF, very small number of this aircraft is in service nowadays.
500+ units were built and few were exported to many countries, Egypt is the second biggest operator of this aircraft with more than 110 units in service.
You need to stare twice to distinguish this advanced trainer L-15 from its western sisters Aermacchi M-346 and Yak-131 !!
L-15 is an optimum Chinese vision for a super-sonic advanced trainer which simulates very close to the more advanced Fourth Generation fighters.
This aircraft first flew in 2006 and still in development till present taking into consideration the interest of few air forces to purchase it.
Y-5 is the Chinese version of An-2 which was built from Soviet blueprints under supervision of Soviet advisers; 700+ units were built before transferring production to Harbin.
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