Walk into any regional airport in America, and you’ll likely see a Cirrus aircraft on the tarmac. Sleek, American-made, often bearing the American flag. What you won’t see is the fine print: Cirrus Aircraft, the largest manufacturer of piston-powered general aviation planes in the United States, has been wholly owned since 2011 by a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the CCP’s primary aerospace and defense conglomerate.
The same company that builds fighter jets, attack helicopters, and drones for the PLA now owns the most delivered piston aircraft in America. Call it what it is: a strategic acquisition, and Congress has been asleep at the controls.
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AVIC is not a typical foreign investor. It’s a creature of the Chinese state, overseen by Beijing’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and a cornerstone of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, a deliberate policy that channels civilian innovation into military applications. When AVIC buys an American aviation company, it isn’t merely buying revenue. It’s buying engineers, manufacturing expertise, FAA certifications, and a front-row seat inside the world’s most sophisticated aerospace ecosystem. In every meaningful sense, it’s an intelligence operation dressed in a business suit.
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Cirrus isn’t an isolated example. Over the past two decades, Chinese entities have made dozens of aviation-sector acquisitions in the United States, along with over ten additional agreements and joint ventures. These acquisitions haven’t been dramatic. There have been no hostile takeovers, no alarming headlines. Instead, these acquisitions have been patient, methodical, and masked behind cheerful, all-American branding. Washington has long recognized commercial aviation as critical national security infrastructure, subjecting airlines and major aerospace deals to intense scrutiny. General aviation, however, exists in a regulatory blind spot, largely untouched by existing safeguards.
The case of Continental Aerospace Technologies illustrates exactly how this works, and exactly how much we’ve let slide.
Headquartered in Mobile, Alabama, the company was acquired in 2010 by AVIC through its subsidiary Technify Motor. CAT maintains an all-American marketing presence, complete with red, white, and blue branding. But AVIC owns 100% of the parent company, with China’s State Asset Commission holding a direct 46.4% stake.
The strategic payoff has been enormous. Within three years of the acquisition, AVIC had produced China’s first domestically developed horizontally opposed piston engine. By 2023, China held nearly 15% of global production capacity in this category. Defense suppliers have credited this acquisition with giving China the capability to develop advanced UAV power systems, including drones that can fly higher, longer, and carry heavier payloads.
And while that technology transfer was underway, American taxpayers were footing part of the bill. Because Continental operates on U.S. soil, it was eligible for federal relief programs. In 2020, the Chinese-linked company received a $7.43 million PPP loan fully forgiven while helping the PLA build better drones. A textbook strategic failure.
The problem runs deeper than just a few companies. China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, reinforced by its 2017 National Intelligence Law, is explicitly designed to ensure that civilian innovations flow directly into military development. Aviation is one of its named priority sectors. That means every technology transfer, every engineer hired away from an American competitor, and every manufacturing process absorbed by a Chinese-owned subsidiary can lead to the PLA.
The threat isn’t limited to hardware. AVIC maintains joint ventures with American firms producing avionics solutions, including flight recording systems and flight-control software, and that same National Intelligence Law can compel those firms to hand Beijing whatever data they collect. In practice, that provides Beijing with a ready-made surveillance network.
But the deeper threat isn’t data collection — it’s control. Cambridge University researchers documented how a backdoor etched into a flight-control chip could let an adversary remotely reprogram systems, feed false readings, or trigger a kill switch, making a plane “fall out of the sky like a brick.”
This isn’t hypothetical. In May 2025, investigators confirmed that rogue communication devices had been embedded in Chinese-manufactured power inverters sold across the United States, creating hidden backdoors allowing remote access. If Beijing is willing and able to build kill switches into solar inverters, there is no reason to assume it hasn’t done the same in its avionics systems. An adversary that owns the software doesn’t need to hack the plane. It can simply take control.
We have laws on the books that should address this, yet Cirrus and CAT continue to operate largely unrestricted on American soil, employing American engineers, accessing American supply chains, and receiving American money. The existing legal framework focuses on parent companies rather than their U.S.-based subsidiaries, and CFIUS and the Department of Commerce lack the teeth to police general aviation. The strategic gap is wide enough to fly a PLA drone right through.
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That must change. Congress must close the subsidiary loophole and broaden the scope of existing investment screening tools to include civilian aerospace industries. If the parent company is designated as a Chinese military entity, its American subsidiaries should face the same restrictions on access to sensitive supply chains, American data, and government assistance.
The planes on our tarmacs look American, but in too many cases, the ownership, and the intelligence benefits, flow directly to Beijing. We don’t have to keep letting it happen, but we do have to start paying attention.
Pat Harrigan is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District.
