China has further opened up its tightly controlled aviation sector to foreign investment in hopes of winning more funding amid booming demand for air travel, Xinhua news agency reported, citing an official.
“China opened the civil aviation sector to foreign investors in 2002, and now it is time to further open it,” the news agency quoted Yuan Yaohui, a director in the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, as saying.

Yuan said China is seeking private capital to join in areas such as cargo, airport construction, jet fuel sales and storage, airplane maintenance, catering and computer-based air-ticketing systems. But the government is unwilling to allow foreign control of several of the sectors.

Investors cannot, for example, take majority stakes in the country’s three largest airlines, Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines.

Neither can private investors take dominant stakes in major domestic airports or air traffic control systems. The new regulation will take August 15, the report said.
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