China is expected to be the world's fastest-growing market for air travel, as the world's airlines look for an annual global growth of about six percent in passenger traffic over the next four years.

The International Air Transport Association made the forecasts Wednesday. In its year-end report, the association said the Chinese air-passenger market will turn in an average annual growth of 12.5 percent until 2008. It stressed China will generate significant long-haul business traffic as it leads global economic expansion for the foreseeable future.

Around the world, the airline industry carried 14 percent more passengers than last year, but still expects to post combined losses of nearly 5 billion US dollars for 2004. Analysts say there's still a long way to go before the industry totally recovers from the pains brought by the 2001 terror attacks and SARS epidemic.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2004)