Boeing in talks to sell as many as 500 planes to China: sources

[BEIJING] Boeing is heading closer towards finalising a deal with China to sell as many as 500 aircraft, according to people familiar with the matter, a transaction that would end a sales drought that stretches back to US President Donald Trump’s last visit in 2017.

The two sides are still hammering out terms of the complex aircraft sale, including the types and volume of jet models and delivery timetables, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential matters.

The mega sale to China, years in the making, is contingent on the two nations diffusing the trade hostilities that hark back to Trump’s first term in office – and could still fall apart, they said.

Chinese officials have already started consulting domestic airlines about how many Boeing aircraft they will need, the people said. The transaction taking shape is similar in scope to the order for as many as 500 jets that China’s central planners have struck with Airbus, but have not yet announced, they added.

The Boeing order is expected to be the centrepiece of a trade agreement that would benefit both Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping, the culmination of long-running and sometimes contentious negotiations. The nation’s leaders were close to a similar announcement in 2023, but then-President Joe Biden and Xi left a San Francisco summit without consummating an aircraft sale.

Complicating matters for Boeing is a leadership void in China. Alvin Liu, its top executive in China and a fluent Mandarin-speaker with extensive government contacts, left the company in recent weeks. Carol Shen has been named interim president of Boeing China, said people familiar with the matter.

Boeing declined to comment on any potential deal or management changes.

Aircraft orders for Boeing have figured large in US diplomacy since Trump returned to the White House in January, with nations touting new, tentative and existing deals for airplanes, which are as expensive as skyscrapers, to narrow trade imbalances with the US.

The US and China have engaged in several rounds of talks since de-escalating tit-for-tat tariffs that soared to as high as 145 per cent, but have yet to reach a final trade deal. Earlier in the summer, Xi, in a phone call, invited Trump to China at an unspecified date. One opportunity for the pair to meet is in late October, ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.