China's general aviation industry is in urgent need of development to support the country's rapid economic growth, according to experts.

General aviation refers to all civil aviation activities except scheduled passenger flights, and mainly involves agricultural flights, emergency rescue, cultural and sports activities, ocean and environment exploration and business flights.

China's general aviation for the development of agriculture, industry, forestry and energy resources is in the doldrums though its civil aviation has made great strides during the past 50 years, the experts say.

The general aviation sector uses the most planes, pilots and airports. In 2001 more than 300,000, or 70 percent, of the world's total of 460,000 planes were used in general aviation, statistics show.

However, in China the general aviation sector has only about 400 planes, 0.2 percent of those in use in the United States, though China's territory is similar to that of the US and its GDP last year was 10 percent of that country's.

Covering a land territory of 9.6 million square kilometers, China has more than 500 islands and 600 cities, most of which do not have civil aviation routes. Some 63.03 million hectares of land suitable for forestry are undeveloped, with 13.3 million hectares in urgent need of afforestation for environmental reasons. However, planes are only used in 1.7 percent of the afforestation work on arable land and 1,000 more planes are needed for agricultural and afforestation use to raise the percentage to 17.

The development of general aviation will bring about development in relevant high-tech industries involving new materials, electronics, telecommunications and energy sources, the experts say.

Aviation sector is opening wider to outside

China's aviation sector is opening wider to foreign investors. A regulation on foreign investment in the industry, which came into effect on August 1, provides a chance for foreign investors to enter the sector.

Huang Daohong, a member of China's general aviation expert committee, attributed the unbalanced structure of the aviation industry to the undeveloped general aviation sector which lags far behind the transport aviation sector.

He called on government departments and enterprises concerned to boost the development of general aviation so that it can catch up with the civil aviation sector.

(People's Daily August 21, 2002)