ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the very important influences that has exerted by the three great metropolitan centres of modern China on the growth of civil aviation since the commencement of market reform. It focuses on the current development of these centres as emergent forces within the larger context of China's potential role in both the domestic and international aviation markets. The chapter also focuses on the key importance of the three regional locations as a formative influence on the liberalization and modernization of the Chinese economy. The locational sequence commences with the Pearl River Delta (PRD), as the prototypical special economic zone (SEZ), followed by Shanghai, as the now acknowledged leader of economic development in China. The chapter places the substantive roles played by the civil aviation industry, within the continually expanding economic and social growth of what Kasarda has defined as the modern aeropolis.
