Beijing and Shanghai over Seoul and Busan

Beijing and Shanghai over Seoul and Busan

"Number of round-trip flights by Chinese airlines linking China and Japan tops 1,000 per week"

The Japan Times - November 5, 2019, Nolan Matcovich - November 13, 2019

The recent relaxation of rules about limits to the number of roundtrip flights from China to Japan each week has seen the weekly numbers of these flights shoot up drastically, and put China ahead of South Korea as the country with the most flight connections to Japan per week. The move was brought about by a bilateral accord in September, but reflects efforts to shift time slots at airports over to more profitable airlines after a number of airlines decreased their frequency of flights from between Japan and South Korea as a result of worsening relations between the two countries.

While reading this article, however, I was struck by two things in particular. First, I wondered what the main motivation for choosing China as the replacement for South Korea is. Obviously, it is the most populous and biggest market in the immediate region (and arguably, especially for overseas travel, the world), so in many ways this is the most logical replacement. Some might point to this easing of regulations as a sign of Japan cozying up to China politically, but I am much more of the mind that the Japanese government and aviation and tourism industries are simply trying to encourage China's travel-loving middle and upper classes to come to Japan, especially if it allows them to earn they would otherwise be losing from Koreans, if not more.

Second, I was surprised by the fact that such a large investment was made in Chinese airline arrivals, given the history the article mentioned of the Chinese government preventing or discouraging group and individual travel to countries after a deterioration of relations. In the current case of the decrease of Korean visitors, as far as I know and as far as the article discussed, this decrease was largely due to personal choices to not travel or due to more subtle and/or systematic reasons. The Korean government has not told its citizens not to travel to Japan, so Japan is suffering from a loss of Korean tourist masses, but at a slower, more natural pace. Should Beijing change its mind on Japan and its citizens traveling there, the decline in tourists would be a different story: abrupt and incredibly impactful.

Additionally, I was wondering to what extent, if any, this accord impacts flights to and from Hong Kong and Macau, given their special statuses within China and Hong Kong and, although to a much lesser extent, Macau's roles as global and regional air travel hubs and transfer points. Although cities like Beijing and Shanghai are increasingly approaching, if not exceeding, the level of importance of Hong Kong in global air travel, anything in the accord that distinguishes Hong Kong (and Macau) from the rest of China could have large impacts, albeit in either direction, on Japan's position in the broader East Asian, Asian, and global aviation world.