China Airborne by James Fallows

their own sort of land support, “a system of terrestrial navigation and communication facilities spread out along the route to provide navigation assistance and weather reports.” 11 No one had the time, patience, money, or security to produce these systems in China. By the time of the Japanese invasion in the 1930s and China’s subsequent engulfment in revolution and war, there were only a handful of passenger flights operating in the country, and most were run by foreign companies like Pan Am.
Why China did it differently
    By the time Mao’s government turned its attention to aviation, in the late 1950s, the path dependence of China’s transportation system made its choices different from those available in most other countries.
    In Europe as in the United States, private flying, by hobbyists, tinkerers, and adventurers, came first. By the time of World War I the military was emerging as an important source of funding; and through the 1920s there was a diverse and quickly changing ecology of people who one way or another made a living through aviation: amateur flyers, crop dusters and air-show performers, military flyers, government airmail systems, and the early private airlines (an important one of which, United Air Lines, was spun off from Boeing in the 1930s).
    The regulatory system in North America and Europe was also diverse, and reflected a belief in a checks-and-balances system with divided responsibilities and powers. In the United States, a Civil Aeronautics Board was established to oversee—and promote—the business of air travel and to regulate routes and fares; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worked on improving safety and procedures, while also working on navigation systems and weather forecasting; what was eventually the National Transportation Safety Board had an independent role in investigating crashes; and NASA, the military, and other groups played significant parts as sponsors. As the country with the largest and fastest-growing aerospace business, the United States also set an international lead in how regulatory systems should be designed.
    Even the training of pilots was diversified. In Europe and North America, the military directly trained a number of pilots (many of whom eventually left to join the civilian airline fleets), and specialized “aeronautical universities” 12 were created to train others, along with mechanics and air-traffic controllers. By the 1950s, the United States had built more than four thousand airfields, large and small, across the country. Some were military bases, some big commercial airports, some rural or private landing strips; some were civic booster projects to attractbusinesses to remote communities or make it easier for residents to reach big-city services. There were a lot of them, and the great majority offered small flying schools or repair shops too. Only a handful have been built since then, the most notable being Washington Dulles in the 1960s, Dallas–Fort Worth in the 1970s, and Denver International in the 1990s. Meanwhile hundreds of smaller airports have been closed.
    Thus, in most of the flying world, the military propelled a business that civilians had started and still dominated. China’s reentry into aviation in the communist era was under military control from the start. There was practically no tradition of civil aviation in China. At the dawn of World War II and again for the Korean War and Vietnam, the United States could call on hundreds of thousands of young men and women who had been exposed to airplanes or air shows in some way. They had no counterpart in China, and don’t even now. If you look at airspace maps of Europe or North America, the portions that are still controlled by the military are relatively small (except over the desert areas of Nevada, Utah, and Southern California, where they are very large). All the rest is for business, recreational, or commercial-airline use. If you look at an airspace map of