Reverse Engineering?
I believe that it was in 1989 that Aerospatiale, as it was then, sold an AS 350B1 to a Chinese operator. The aircraft ‘disappeared’ in 1990/1991 and was reported by the operator to be in a very remote part of the country.
When finally the factory managed to get a technical team into inspect it, on a ‘product support visit’, I understand that the report back was that the helicopter showed all the signs of having been completely dismantled and put back together again.
The Z-11 would appear to be further evidence of a bit of ‘reverse engineering’.