* Producing 2 jets a month in China, praises quality-CEO
* Sees Chinese demand for 3,000 planes over 20 years
* Wants to sell A380 and A350 long-range jets to Japan
* Ready to forge industrial co-operation deals in Japan
By Sabine Siebold
TOKYO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Europe's Airbus expects China, with its seemingly unstoppable traffic growth, to resume buying aircraft and has set its sights on conquering Japan -- long seen as a fortress of its arch-rival Boeing.
"We know that China needs about 3,000 planes over the next 20 years. We want to be a part of that," Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders told Reuters in interview, during a visit to Tokyo.
"We expect more orders to come because we don't only sell our planes there, but we increasingly produce the added value in China too."
China typically orders aircraft in large batches often coinciding with diplomatic visits. However, it has not bought aircraft in any large quantity since the economic crisis began.
EADS unit Airbus is half way to achieving its production goal of four planes a month at its recently inaugurated production facility in Tianjin, Enders told Reuters.
"The quality is very good on this line, just as good as in Toulouse and Hamburg," Enders said.
Enders was in Tokyo as part of a trip to Japan and China by German business leaders. He told reporters separately that it would be difficult for Airbus to push ahead with its troubled A400M military plane project without considerable help from governments to meet a multi-billion-dollar cost blowout.
Airbus's Tianjin factory, its first production plant outside Europe assembles A320 single-aisle jets for the Chinese market, whose activity has been dented by the global economic crisis.
Air China and other Chinese carriers are expected to handle 260 million passengers this year, up about 13 percent from 2009, an aviation official was quoted on Thursday as saying.
China's airlines, which also include China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, returned to profitability in 2009 on government cash aid and a fast recovery of domestic air travel.
While competing for Chinese orders, Airbus and Boeing as well as smaller regional jet markers in Canada and Brazil are also facing the threat of competition as Beijing fosters new Chinese jets.
China has made public an ambitious goal of manufacturing large passenger jets with more than 150 seats and freighters capable of handling more than 100 tonnes of cargo to break open a large jetliner duopoly held by Boeing and Airbus.
Reports say China aims to conduct its first flight of a domestically developed large commercial jetliner, the C919, by 2014 and to begin deliveries in 2016.
Airbus delivered its first plane assembled in China to its owner last June.
JAPAN COOPERATION
For Japan, where Airbus wants to sell A380 superjumbos and its future mid-sized A350s, Enders held out the prospect of industrial co-operation but ruled out an assembly plant opening there soon.
"We are of course also prepared to co-operate more strongly with Japan just as we do with China and other countries," he said.
U.S. firm Boeing has strong ties with Japanese heavy engineering firms which make the wings for its delayed 787 Dreamliner.
The U.S. hold on the Japanese aviation market dates back to the postwar reconstruction and more recently from a broader effort on Japan's part to ease trade tensions during the 1980s.
Airbus said this week it planned to pursue outsourcing to try to reduce its dependence on costs denominated in strong euros, which look uncompetitive against revenues in dollars.
It delivered a record 498 airliners last year, up from 483 in 2008, beating rival Boeingfor the seventh year running, but it has only a fractional market share in Japan.
Airbus's assault on Japan comes as Boeing reviews plans for a high-density short-haul version of its carbon-composite 787 Dreamliner originally designed for the Japanese market.
"The market viability of the 787-3 is currently being assessed," a Boeing spokesman said on Friday.
That move came after All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan's second-largest airline and the launch customer for the 787, ditched its 787-3 orders in favour of longer-range versions.
Airbus was forced to abandon efforts to sell the A380, the world's largest airliner, to ANA last year due to the financial crisis.
The 787 made its first test flight in mid-December.
The prospect of increased trade-offs between plane deals and industrial tie-ups as the aerospace sector become global came to the fore last month when Korean Air ordered five Boeing 747-8 jets weeks after being selected to produce 747-8 wing components through its aerospace division. (Additional reporting by Nathan Layne; writing by Tim Hepher; editing by Michael Watson and Karen Foster) (Paris newsroom +331 4949 5452 paris.equities@reuters.com))