Abstract
China’s international air transportation has experienced tremendous growth and major reforms over the past two decades. While there has been a considerable discussion on the evolution of China’s domestic aviation market, studies on China’s international aviation markets have been limited. This paper first describes the historical development of China’s international aviation market and then, based on actual origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data, explores the relevant evolution of China’s international air networks from the perspectives of the spatial distribution of international air networks and clustering characteristics of international air passengers. The development of China’s international aviation market can be attributable to the deregulation process in China’s aviation market and a broad “opening up” strategy in the global forum after 1990. Due to China’s proximity to East Asia and Southeast Asia, China’s international air networks show an obvious clustering pattern for short and medium-haul travel in Asia. In addition, average international air travel distance, institutional and policy changes, and increasing foreign trade and foreign tourism are crucial for the expansion of China’s international air networks.
Highlights
The rapid globalization and regionalization of the world after the 1980s dramatically increased functional interactions between countries, which has had a significant effect in increasing international travel, air travel [1]
A result of this collaboration was that international air travel became a major travel trajectory in Europe, especially in light of the fact that the spatial scales of European countries are relatively small [3]
According to figures from the Official Airline Guides (OAG), the total number of available seats increased from 320 million in 2008 to 802 million in 2017, and it is expected that China will displace the US as the world’s largest aviation market by 2022 [10]
Summary
The rapid globalization and regionalization of the world after the 1980s dramatically increased functional interactions between countries, which has had a significant effect in increasing international travel, air travel [1]. Sustainability 2019, 11, 3566 connection of China’s aviation industry from the perspectives of policy changes and spatial evolution The reasons for this are: (1) Compared to the US and Europe, in recent decades China’s market share of the global aviation market has been rather small. Some researchers have pointed out that as a result of the consolidation scheme, the international competitiveness of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou as international airline hubs has increased [21,23] Those studies focus only on a specific year or only a few major first-tier international airport cities, rather than the dynamics of a whole Chinese international aviation market from the perspective of policy changes.
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