Aviation infrastructure investment in China: Great needs, great opportunities and great challenges

Abstract

The Chinese economic miracle has been fuelled in large part by a flood of foreign investment. For a variety of reasons, airport infrastructure construction has yet to experience the kinds of foreign investment supplied to China's manufacturing sectors. For this, and other reasons, China's airport sector faces urgent and massive investment needs to ensure that under-investment in aviation infrastructure does not cause a bottleneck stifling continued GDP growth. This paper discusses the core economic and demographic fundamentals of the Chinese aviation infrastructure, which shows high levels of unmet demand and profound shortages of infrastructure to meet that demand, all of which strongly suggest that aviation infrastructure presents attractive investment opportunities, and will continue to do so for many years to come. The paper also documents a variety of legal, administrative and political challenges that must be addressed for investors to realise the full potential that investing in this developing sector presents.