Open Skies Can Clear China’s ‘Orwellian’ Cloud
An agreement to expand market access would be the best way to resist corporate censorship.
Getting a slot at China’s traffic-choked airports isn’t easy for U.S. airlines.
Photographer: Zhang Peng/LightRocket/Getty Images
The Trump administration has condemned as “Orwellian nonsense” China’s insistence that U.S. airlines refrain from listing Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate countries. The words are strong, but its leverage is weak.
China’s aviation sector, once a global laggard, is on track to be the world’s biggest market. Its growth has empowered the nation’s regulators and airlines — and eroded the clout of traditional aviation powers such as the United States. For U.S. carriers keen to get a piece of this growing pie, that means flying by China’s rules. And for the Trump administration, that presents an increasingly common and difficult problem: how to rebalance an economic relationship that’s tilting away from the U.S.