Qingdao Airlines (22 A320neos, 2 A321neos)

A320neo Qingdao Airlines B-302P by Tobias Gudat, auf Flickr

A320neo Qingdao Airlines B-302N by Tobias Gudat, auf Flickr

How many airlines are there in the EU and Russia ?

Does China have more airlines flying A320/B737 or higher than the EU + Russia + the USA have ?

Well, first of all, China is a huge aviation market. Besides the well-established Beijing, Shanghai markets (which is one of the top-5 busiest routes in the world volume wise), there are tremendous growth potentials in secondary cities and even smaller cities. Speaking of which, for example, Changzhou, Jiangsu is the 4th biggest city in Jiangsu province with 12 million population, which is close to LA metro area's total population. (!!!) It is one of the stronger region in economy in Jiangsu Province but its airport only has about 1.8 million passenger count in 2015. In comparison Columbus, Ohio's airport CMH has close to 10 mil passenger annually but only serves about 2 million population in Columbus metro area. So the potential of Chinese second tier and third tier city growth is tremendous. As the Chinese big 4 has limited resources (fleet, staff, coverage) to expand into the smaller cities, guys like Spring Airlines, Juneyao Airlines, Xiamen Airlines and Shandong Airlines and much more become more focused on the small city pair growth.

Secondly, government subsidies. Local governments in China usually have promises to fulfill in terms of economical growth. In order to attract investments from other regions, the governments get focused on air traffic growth in their respective regions, and air link is a very important aspect of economy growth. First they'd start with expanding/building airports and runways. Then establishing a home airlines is a straightforward way to fill their newly-built airports and runways. That's why there's a tons of new government backed airlines emerge in recent years. Plus most of these airlines have something in common, they are partly owned by one (or more, see Sichuan Airlines) of the big Three airlines of China, and that's because at the start-up phase, they need help from the big guys with establishing their operations. Later on, they start expanding and renewing their own fleet, which is why you see all the unfamiliar Chinese Airlines taking new aircrafts like A320neo.