China’s airport development still has vast potential, according to a statement by the director of Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), Jiaxiang Li, on March 5 2015.
“We don’t have many airports yet and definitely not enough to meet demand. When you look at the current pace of airport development from the perspective of service standards and civil aviation development, there is still plenty of room for growth,” he said.
Currently there are 202 airports in China, compared to more than 19,700 in the USA, 700 plus in Brazil and some 350 in India, according to Mr. Li. “When it comes to airport development scale, China is lagging far behind other developed or developing nations of similar size,” he said.
This year 35 airports are under construction.
The development of airports is critical for increasing connecting regions and attracting investment, especially against the backdrop of the upgrading of regional development policies and maintaining stable growth.
For example, the new Beijing airport is the first project in the greater Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration strategy. The airport costs RMB79.98 billion (approx: US$12.78 billion) for construction and RMB4.16 billion (approx: US$664 million) and RMB2.2 billion (approx: US$351 million) respectively for air traffic control and fuel storage facilities, documents approved by the National Development and Reform Commission show.(Translation by David)
