Research On International Competitiveness Of China Civil Aviation Transport Industry

As one of the most important parts of national economy, air transport industry functions as an essential, leading, strategic and innovative trade. Since the national reform and opening-up in 1978, this industry has seen swift changes. In 2008, the total volume of airfreight achieved 37.68 billion ton-km, the volume of passenger transport 192.5 million, and the volume of freight transport 4.08 million tons. The annual growth rates of these three indexes were respectively 17.5%,15.9%and 14.9%during the past 30 years. The total volume of airfreight has been the world's second place since 2005.However, China air transport industry has a long way to go compared with the well developed countries. Opening skies in the global civil aviation market will be the wave of the future. To enhance the competitiveness in international markets is top priority for China air transport industry.On the basis of a review of the researches home and abroad on international competitiveness in air transport, this paper has identified that the researches on this subject, including many topics from concepts to evaluations, have not reached an agreement. That leaves room for a further research. This paper has analyzed the situation of China civil aviation industry from five aspects, including production factors, enterprises capability, competitive envirionment, gonernment regulation and related industry,, identified the existing problems in the aspect of international competitiveness of China air transport industry. Meanwhile, in a comparative study of the market-oriented reform and performance of this industry in the U.S and Japan, this paper has offered important enlightenment to the reform of China air transport industry.After analyzing the various scholars'researches, this paper has given its own definition of international competitiveness of air transport industry from macroscopic perspective and microscopic perspective, made a detailed analysis of the elememts affecting international competitiveness, worked out a Five-factor Analyzing Model to study the interactions among production, enterprise competence, competition environment, government regulations and relative industries.Based on the above researches, this paper constructed a DEA super-efficiency model to quantitatively evaluate international competitiveness of air transport, using indexes selected from aspects of human, financial and material resources as inputs, from aspects of finances and non-finances as outputs. As the result of the empirical analysis indicates, most of the airlines'efficiency rating values are practical, and Emirates Airlines, Scandinavia Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Korean air have the highest efficiency rating values. It also indicates that the competitiveness of Xiamen Airlines is stronger than Air China, China Southern and China Eastern.Finally, taking the present situation of China air transport into consideration and based on the five-elements model of international competitiveness of China civil aviation industry, this paper has proposed measures to enhance international competitiveness of China air transport, including strengthening the factors of production management to enhance foundational competitiveness, strengthening enterprise capability building to enhance the core competitiveness, creating a healthy competitive environment to enhance the competitiveness of reality, relying on the development of related industries to enhance the potential competitiveness,and promoting reform of government regulation to enhance the competitiveness of the system.