VOA Chinese, Mar 23, 2011.
http://www.voanews.com/chinese/news/20110323-Chinas-Advancing-Aerospace-Industry-And-US-Policy-Alterations-118544099.html
, which is based on
Roger Cliff, Chad JR Ohlandt and David Yang, Ready to Take Off; China's Advancing Aerospace Industry. US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2011.
http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2011/RAND_Aerospace_Report%5B1%5D.pdf
Quote:
"In 2007, China’s major airlines1 booked more than 230 billion revenue passenger-kilometers (RPK), or almost 31 billion tonne-kilometers, flown. Passenger-kilometers and tonne-kilometers are standard measures in the aviation industry, where the number of passengers flown or the total weight carried (including passengers) is multiplied by the distance traveled. For comparison, China’s RPK is about 20 percent that of U.S. airlines, more than the traffic carried by either German or Japanese airlines and about 6.7 percent of all world traffic in 2007 (International Air Transport Association, 2008). See Figure 2.1.
"The development of the rail and highway systems within China is likely to have minimal impact on future air freight trends. Air freight is the most expensive method for moving cargo, and it is generally only used when transit time is an issue or the cargo has a high-monetaryvalue density, e.g., fresh flowers or computer chips. * * * In any case, most of China’s air freight traffic is international
"As of the end of 2008, it had only 71 airports for general aviation, apart from the 160 airports used for scheduled flights (compared with more than 18,000 general aviation airports in the United States)
My comment:
(a) The monograph is on sale at the bookstores such as Amazon.com.
(b) There is no need to read the Preface.
(c) Regarding quotation 1 above. A month ago I could not find information from or about China about revenue passenger-miles (RPM), unaware that China uses kilometers not miles.
In addition, RPM/RPK of a nation can be chalked up to (i) both domestic and international airlines that fly in, out or within the nation*, or (ii) domestic airlines of that nation. Judging from the context, quotation 1 apparently refers to China's domestic airlines alone.
* Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), US Department of Transportation subscribes to this mode.
http://www.bts.gov/
At any rate, China's RPK "per capita" is very small compared with America's. Fig 2.7.
(d) Quotation 2 from p. 9 is about air freight. The rest of Chapter Two is about PASSENGERS (air and rail).
sunk cost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
(e) The monograph does not talk about aircraft engines much. The most significant, in my view, is asa follows.
"It should also be pointed out that while technology transfers of this type do help to elevate China’s commercial aerospace capabilities from a very low base, their direct impact on Chinese military capabilities is even more limited, as the most critical military aerospace technologies are unlikely
to be transferred via commercial avenues. Stealth, for instance, is not directly relevant to commercial aviation, and the same is true for sensor fusion and networking multiple aircraft. Basic engine technology is common to both commercial and military aircraft, but design goals for affordable, highly efficient commercial turbofans are quite different from those for high-performance military engines.