Is the Unbalance of Geographical Distribution of Air Transportation in Mainland China Really Unbalanced?

摘要

In the past decades, the unbalance of geographical distribution of air transportation in Mainland China, which was that more air traffic located in the East of China and the West of China received much less air traffic in both passenger and freight services, was considered a serious problem of air transportation industry by the regulator. And the regulator adopted policies to change such “unbalance”. In this paper, the authors utilized the Hu Line which was drew by Professor Hu Huanyong in 1935, also called Heihe-Tengchong Line, showing a striking difference in the distribution of China's population, which was stable until last census in 2000. The airports in Mainland China were divided by the Hu Line, and the data of air traffic throughput during 1958-2010 were used. The author found that the proportions of air traffic throughput to the West and East of Hu Line were not changed much during that period of time. This demonstrated that the air traffic density was in coincidence with the population density. The authors concluded that the so-called “unbalance” of geographical distribution of air transportation in Mainland China was really reasonable.