 It is springtime for China's aerospace business. Banquets, toasts in fiery spirits and a 3D video show have been used to launch the nation's first passenger jet, the C919, at air fairs in Beijing and Hong Kong, throwing down a challenge to western aviation champions Boeing and airbus.  More celebrations followed when the Beidou 8 orbiter lifted off to complete China's system of satellites for a precision navigation system to rival america's GPS and Europe's stuttering Galileo project.  The triumphs owe much to Chinese determination. They also show how the country is racing to become a competitor in high-tech sectors in which western companies thought they had an edge. The implications for multinational businesses are sobering.  Yet american firms are lining up to supply systems for the C919, a single-aisle jet seating 150 that will compete with the Boeing 737 and airbus a320. It will use the best western avionics - and it will be cheap. Ryanair is already in talks with the makers.  With 2,900 aircraft orders in China to play for in the coming years, firms such as GE, Pratt &amp; Whitney, Rockwell Collins and Honeywell cannot afford to stay away. Rolls-Royce is banking on engine sales to the Chinese airlines. Until, that is, the day when the Chinese can build their own.  From trains and planes to genetic engineering, the scale of China's plans for science and technology is only just becoming clear - and its ambitions are sowing tension between Beijing and foreign firms. Donald Trump, the would-be Republican presidential candidate, says he would put a 25% tariff on goods from China. Opinion polls track american middle class unease, fed by 8.8% unemployment and slow economic growth while China booms at 10% and the US-China trade deficit stands at $273 billion (?164 billion). Most american voters say they see China as an economic threat.  IN Beijing, officials dismiss western fears as scaremongering, claiming China has been exploited by foreign firms and is only seeking a fair deal.  The details of a Chinese blueprint to excel in new industries emerged slowly, in a series of complex directives from ministries and the state planning authorities. They confirmed multinational executives' belief that China intends to strip their technology as the price for contracts, then turn itself into a fearsome competitor by copying it.  Targets identified in key docu ments of the last fiveyear plan include sectors in which British companies have been staking their hopes on a future flow of contracts and profits from China. They include aerospace, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, pollution control, railways, oil and gas exploration, renewable energy, telecommunications, data security and software.  an example came when Siemens won a contract for 60 high-speed trains. Ultimately, three were built in Germany and 57 at a joint venture plant in China, while Siemens trained 1,000 Chinese technicians at its German factories. When the next big order came up, Siemens' Chinese partner won the ?3.6 billion contract, leaving the Germans to pick up just ?620m for supplying components. The policy has been directed at the highest state level and is known as zizhu chuangxin or indigenous innovation.  a report for the american Chamber of Commerce calls it "a policy that is increasingly viewed by american, European, Japanese and other developed country governments and companies as a protectionist plan that will encourage massive global science and technology theft by China".  The report's author, James McGregor, a counsellor at apco, a consulting firm, said foreign companies have only just woken up to the campaign to force them to disclose technology and then to make "national champions" out of Chinese firms that are often, in effect, still run by the state.  Cabinet-level negotiators from america and China are set for a confrontation over the issues when they meet for a strategic dialogue session this month.  IN 2006, rival bureaucracies in the Chinese system united to generate a "National Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Deve l o p -ment of Science and Technology". Its scope was breathtaking. It identified 11 key sectors, 27 "breakthrough technologies", 18 targets for scientific research and an overarching goal to raise research and development spending in China from 1.3% of GDP to 2.5% in 2020. (Chinese spending on research and development in 2010 was about ?64billion, a quarter of america's ?251 billion).  The breadth of these aims spoke to a deep-seated belief in state planning and control. Officials want to oversee projects as diverse as coal liquefaction, genetically modified crops, deep-sea mining, quantum physics and stem cell research.  In a glimpse of the mindset that still governs Chinese rulers, the plan blandly noted its intention to ensure that the population remained under 1.5 billion and that the percentage of birth defects was be 