Great Commercial Opportunities Inherent in China's Aviation MarketYan Zhiqing, President of China South Airlines Group, predicted that China's aviation industry would still maintain a moderate fast development, and the total turnover keep a growth rate of over 10%.Yan briefed in the China Enterprises Summit Conference recently as saying that the imbalance between demand and supply in current domestic aviation market didn't mean the market saturation but the relative imbalance in structure due to the insufficient effective demand. China's aviation market is far from being fully developed but indicates tremendous commercial opportunities for domestic entrepreneurs. Citing an example, he said, In 1999, the average per capita annual flight times in US were over five while in the same year there was only one person in every 20.5 who got on board only once. If one of every two persons in China takes airplane for one time annually, the annual passenger transportation volume will exceed 0.6 billion person-time, this figure exceeds ten times that of 1999. According to Yan's analysis, China's economy is at the bottom of long-and-medium-term economic cycle, the prosperity will gradually come up. The expansion of production and the increase in economic activities will greatly enhance the economic links between different regions thus producing greater demand on aviation service. For the urban residents of China, the lifestyle is in transition from the state of sufficiency to relative comfortable conditions in which travel by air will gradually become one of the consumption hot spots. In addition, China is expected to join the WTO and the level of opening up to the outside is to be raised remarkably, all these factors will undoubtedly increase the demand on aviation transportation, particularly that of international airlines. Recently, the growth rate of international passenger and cargo transportation is higher than that of domestic one is a manifestation of the development trend. With the growth of demand and the development in production, the replacement and expansion of fleet of China Airlines is inevitable. China is sill one of the aircraft consumption markets with a greater potential in the world. The purchase and leasing, the procurement of aircraft equipment and accessory facilities will bring huge business chances. Cargo air-transportation is one of the biggest beneficiaries after China's accession into WTO, particularly in the field of international cargo transportation market. China is a big market with the population of 1.2 billion, it will see a growth with geometric progression after the removal of customs tariff barriers. In order to develop cargo transportation market, China South Airlines as informed will launch an international freight project. Initially, they'll establish an international freight base, introduce large cargo airplanes, develop international long distance cargo air-transportation and further to promote domestic freight business. The Shenzhen Freight Department of China South Airlines Stock Co., Ltd. has been set up, the freight airplane fleet will be expanded later on for developing international cargo transportation with Shenzhen as its base. Meanwhile, taking the advantage of building the new Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou, they will make Guangzhou the hub in its plan for development. Yan pointed out that before the structural adjustment and system innovation of aviation enterprises came to completion China could only open partial market gradually in accordance with the principle of reciprocal opening on the basis of market demand. Foreign airliners can develop their China market by sharing codes to do partner business, thereby giving full play to their network superiority to enhance the return. |
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