Abstract After nearly 20 years of rapid development, the competitive capacity of China's civilian airport industry has been greatly enhanced. However, with the prosperous development of China's civilian airport, the conflicts between the imbalanced spatial distribution and the competitive advantage of the airport become noteworthy. With regard to the number of the airport, the ranking of the airport, the volume of the airport's business, the business structure of the airport, the structure of the property rights, operation model and market performance, the eastern region has overwhelming advantage. The imbalanced spatial distribution of airport competitive advantage results in the imbalanced development of air transport networks. To a certain extent, it exacerbated the imbalanced development of regional economy. Therefore, central and regional government should formulate relevant policies to accelerate the development of the airports in central and western China in order to narrow the gap of competitive capacity between different regional airports. In central and western regions, more new airports should be built and the existing large and medium-sized airports should be upgraded. Preferential policies should be formulated to attract private and foreign capital in order to build airports in central and western regions. The reform of the structure of the property rights and the operation model should be accelerated. Freight business should be exploited. Hence to provide a platform for central and western airports to strengthen their competitive advantage and efficient operation.
2007, Vol. 22 
