Civil aviation in China

[2] The Nanyuan Airport first broke ground in Beijing near the end of the Qing Dynasty, and Chinese aviation pioneers Qin Guoyong and Li Ruyan,[3] the principal and chief of the flight school operations established there in 1913 under then-president Yuan Shikai, had established the first airline service with a route between Beijing and Baoding in 1914.

[6] In 1922, warlord Cao Kun conducted a 3-day trial tour for "Beijing-Han Airlines" using a Handley Page aircraft (likely a HP O/400 bomber modified for passenger use).

[7] In 1939 at Tsing Hua University a cadre of students constructed a wind tunnel with the help of Frank Wattendorf, a graduate of Harvard, MIT and Caltech.

[2] In China, Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Shenyang and Nanchang are major research and manufacture centers of aerospace industry.

China has developed extensive capability to design, test and produce military aircraft, missiles and space vehicles.

CAAC expects the new airlines to improve operating efficiencies and concentrate on developing a modern "hub-and-spoke" air routing system.

Finally, safety equipment - including emergency vehicles - continues to be an area of interest for Chinese airport authorities.

Over the past 10 years, CAAC has spent approximately $1 billion on air traffic management (ATM) infrastructure improvements.

CAAC Air Traffic Management Bureau's (ATMB) goal over the next 5 years is to improve facilities in the eastern and mid-western sections of the country.

The improvements call for a comprehensive data network, new automation-center systems, ground-air voice/data communications, and new en route radars.

China also plans to introduce ground-to-air communications and Automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast services for international and polar routes in the west.

In reorganizing the current structure, CAAC will construct two new regional control centers, in addition to the three remaining in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

A comprehensive data network, new center-automation systems, ground-air voice/data communications and new en route radars will be required over the next 10 years.

China plans to introduce ground-air communications and automatic dependent surveillance services for international and polar routes in the west.

Airspace environment in X'ian, Kunming, Chongqing and Wuhan will be improved, and over the next five years two new en route centers (in addition to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) will be built.