China is hoping its aviation sector will be the wind beneath its wings.

Hello, and you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne. Good morning.

Asia's biggest air show has opened today and one of the main

attractions already shown is China's first domestically produced passenger jet. The BBC's

Monica is there in Singapore, Monica, tell us what the buzz is like.

What can you see?

I have covered this back in 20, and 22,

which was during the pandemic.

And it was an incredibly quiet time. In fact, a lot of people had pulled out of it

but there is so much energy on this first day there's about a thousand

participants from more than 50 countries and the participants are split 50

50 between commercial air as well as defense so there's just a lot of

interest in this space particularly here in Southeast Asia which is a

region where travel is growing abundantly.

Also on the defense front with the ongoing geopolitical tensions around the world.

We have a lot of military officials and governments that are here looking at the hardware and

figuring out what it is they're going to need to move forward.

Now there's been a lot of buzz about this new passenger jet that China has unveiled.

Tell us a little bit about that. It's quite a story actually.

Back in 2018 I remember seeing this tiny little booth of Comac which is China's homegrown jet maker.

And it had a little booth and it had a little model

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