ABSTRACT
This chapter provides overall statistics on China's aviation, describes air cargo trends in China, identifies major air transport hubs and examines cargo movements between them. The Civil Aviation Administration of China decentralized the airline industry into six aviation bureaus and six corresponding airlines in 1987. Chengdu is the hub in the Southwest, which includes the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Tibet and which covers major cities such as Chongqing and Kunming. This region has a number of international routes, mainly to Southeast Asia. Beijing led during the 1980s as it occupied most of the international airlines and domestic routes. Shanghai began to pick up traffic after 1990 and became the leader in air cargo transport from 1995. Chengdu, Chongqing, and Kunming belong to the same region, the southwest. If there is a hub-and-spoke relation, it seems to be more obvious between Chengdu and Kunming than between Chengdu and Chongqing.
