But China still lacks infrastructure such as airports for general aviation, and personnel, such as pilots and product support and maintenance, he says.

With the stringent airspace rules, those two areas have been seen as a serious obstacle to the development of general aviation in China.

"You can have as many aircraft as you want, but without the infrastructure it is like having a Ferrari sitting in the middle of a rice field with no roads to drive," said Jan Fridrich, vice-president of the Light Aircraft Association of the Czech Republic.

The Czech Republic is a good case study of a country that has built a light aircraft industry from scratch. In just 10 years it has grown to an industry that produces 350 aircraft a year with an export value of 36 million euros, Fridrich said. The key is to provide a complete system of infrastructure essential to the industry, he said.

Just as the car industry has been turbocharged as roads have been built across the country, a thriving general aviation sector cannot grow without a highly developed network of airports.

There are now about 92 million automobiles in China, and many of them are now being driven on roads that have sprung up in the past year.

In 2011 slightly more than 55,000 kilometers of road were opened, about 9,000 km of that being motorways, the statistics bureau said. In 1992 less than 2,400 km of road were built.

Investment in large infrastructure has obviously been a huge driving force of the economy, and investment in general aviation is forecast to play a similar role. More importantly, unlike large infrastructure dominated by investment from State-owned enterprises, the building of general aviation airports may well be open to foreign investors as well as private Chinese companies.

"Building airports for general aviation is not a mega project like building Beijing Capital International Airport," said Zou Jianming, chairman of Shanghai Zenisun Investment Group, a private Chinese company whose roots are in real estate development.

"We've built five airports in Hainan and Fujian provinces over the past two years, and we plan to build 30 for general aviation by 2020."

The company said the investment required to build airports varies widely, depending on their size, and the airports Zenisun has built cost between 100 million yuan and 150 million yuan.

Zou entered the industry because of his personal interest in flying, first setting up a company to sell helicopters to the wealthy, before starting a general aviation business, which includes charters.

The Civil Aviation Administration said there were 286 airports in China for general aviation last year, compared with 19,700 in the US.

"To develop the sector we need to have more airports, at least one airport for each county in China," said Jin Qiansheng, director of the administrative committee of Shaanxi Aviation Economic and Technological Development Zone. That would mean there would be 3,000 airports and landing strips in the country, he said.

 

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