I. Analysis of the policy background of China's air cargo industry development

In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, in order to facilitate the smooth transportation of anti-epidemic materials, the Civil Aviation Administration issued the Notice on Establishing a "Green Channel" for the approval of International Air Cargo during the Epidemic Prevention and Control Period in April 2020, establishing a "green channel" for the approval of international cargo flights, and promoting the smooth and efficient approval of international cargo flight plans. In addition, the Civil Aviation Administration also issued the Notice on Further Optimizing the Flight Management Policy of cargo Routes, established and updated the flight restriction list of cargo routes in a timely manner, and implemented differentiated management of cargo and mail flight times and passenger flight times. At the same time, the Ministry of Finance promulgated the Notice on Implementing Financial Support Policy for Civil Aviation Transport Enterprises to Stabilize and Enhance International Cargo Capacity during the epidemic prevention and Control Period in May 2020, providing financial support for aircraft cabin loading modification projects and non-passenger international cargo flights.

The national support policy not only focuses on the epidemic, but also tries to give China's air cargo a more favorable development environment in the medium and long term.In August 2020, the Civil Aviation Administration promulgated the Cargo and Mail Flight Scheduling Policy, which implements differentiated cargo and mail flight scheduling Windows according to the classification of main and auxiliary coordinating airports, non-coordinating airports and airports with strong cargo and mail functions, increases the cargo and mail flight scheduling window, and extends the cargo and mail flight scheduling window. In September, the Pilot Work Plan for Promoting the Improvement of Comprehensive Support Capability of Air Logistics was promulgated to promote the transformation and upgrading of air logistics.

II. Market status analysis of China's air cargo industry

2015-2019 With the development of civil aviation industry, China's civil aviation cargo and mail transport volume continues to grow, in 2019 China's civil aviation cargo and mail transport volume reached 7.532 million tons;
In 2020, due to the impact of the global epidemic, the volume of civil aviation cargo and mail transport will drop to 6.766 million tons, down 10.2% year on year.
In 2021, with the effective control of the epidemic in China, the volume of civil aviation cargo and mail transport in China from January to August was 4.858 million tons, an increase of 18.2%.

Source: Civil Aviation Administration of China, Huajing Industrial Research Institute

In terms of civil aviation freight turnover, according to statistics, as of January to August 2021, China's civil aviation freight turnover was 18.54 billion tons kilometers, an increase of 24.9%.

资料来源：中国民用航空局，华经产业研究院整理

民航机场货邮吞吐量方面，据统计，截至2021年1-8月我国民航机场货邮吞吐量为1177.2万吨，同比增长20.9%。

Source: Civil Aviation Administration of China, Huajing Industrial Research Institute

Specific to the cargo throughput of airports across the country, Shanghai Pudong Airport completed 3.686,600 tons of cargo throughput in 2020, an increase of 1.4% year-on-year in 2019, ranking first in the country.Affected by the epidemic, 11 of the top 20 airports in terms of cargo and mail throughput have experienced negative growth, among which Beijing Capital Airport's cargo and mail throughput in 2020 is 1.398,800 million tons, down 38.1% year on year, with the largest decline.

Source: Public data collation

In October 2021, the price of air cargo from Shanghai to North America was 10.45 USD/kg, +72.16% year-on-year.According to statistics, on October 22, 2021, the Shanghai-North America and Shanghai-Europe air cargo prices were $10.45 / kg and $6.59 / kg, respectively, with week-on-week values of -6.61% and -8.09%, and year-on-year values of +72.16% and +56.16%; Hong Kong-North America and Hong Kong-Europe air freight prices were 10.45 US dollars/kg and 7.24 US dollars/kg, respectively, with week-on-week +4.92% and +6.16%, and year-on-year +88.29% and +89.53%, respectively.
It can be seen that due to the repeated impact of Delta virus mutation in overseas regions, the expected continued delay in the recovery of international passenger aircraft belly capacity, the combination of vaccine transport crowding capacity and the recent Shanghai airport newly confirmed cases affecting passenger freight and other factors, the tense situation of air capacity will continue, and air freight prices are still at a high level.In the medium and long term, China's cross-border e-commerce logistics industry has high growth, the market space is broad, and the demand for export transportation of e-commerce products still has the power to release.

Source: Public data collation

Source: Public data collation

III. Analysis of the competitive landscape of the global air cargo industry

Compared with leading foreign cargo airlines, Chinese airlines not only have a smaller fleet of cargo aircraft, but also have an overall lower cargo and mail turnover volume.While the passenger business of Chinese airlines has gradually climbed to the forefront of the world, air cargo started relatively late, and the concept of focusing on passengers and light cargo has caused the development of cargo to be relatively slow.According to the 2020 "World Air Transport Statistics Report" released by the International Air Transport Association, among global airlines in 2020, the three major airlines ranked in the top ten in terms of passenger turnover, among which China Southern ranked second after American Airlines.In terms of cargo and mail turnover, only China Southern Airlines ranks ninth among the top ten, and there is a big difference between the development of passenger transport and cargo transport.

Source: International Air Transport Association, China Economic Research Institute

Fourth, China's air cargo logistics development strategy

1. Integrate the supply chain
Different from other modes of transport, air freight logistics has extremely high requirements and great dependence on technology and information technology. From transport equipment to transport network, every transport link is highly dependent on the support of science and technology. The cost of guiding air freight logistics is relatively high.In order to meet the development needs, airlines should expand the scope of services as much as possible, expand the development field, and constantly integrate the supply chain to form a more perfect one-stop service, so that more businesses choose air cargo logistics for transportation.Air cargo companies can not ignore every supply link such as manufacturers, suppliers and distributors, so as to enhance their market competitiveness.

2. Improve the logistics network and integrate logistics resources
At present, China's air freight logistics transportation presents a situation of seasonal imbalance and regional unbalanced development, and the route network in some areas is not complete. In view of these problems, China's air freight companies should integrate logistics resources and further improve the air logistics network.Specifically, China's air cargo companies should expand the size of the fleet, expand the development market in areas with low air cargo volume, cooperate with enterprises, develop more strategic partners, so as to expand the market to solve this series of development problems.

3. Establish a cargo hub airport
From the perspective of the development trend of air cargo logistics, air cargo hub airport has a large market demand. The air cargo hub market can improve the cargo processing rate and greatly save time and cost, thus helping the stable and sustainable development of air cargo logistics.If China wants to make new breakthroughs in air cargo, it is necessary to build more air cargo hub airports and establish the core hub of logistics, thus forming an important core of global logistics.

4. Increase management efforts and introduce professional talents
Although air freight logistics has been developed for a long time in our country, compared with the traditional logistics, air freight logistics is still the most novel logistics transportation mode, and there are still some management skills and management experience in this aspect of management.In order to make up for the lack of management, air cargo logistics companies should introduce more professional management personnel with high salaries, form a good management mechanism and corporate culture, and regularly train enterprise personnel in professional skills and comprehensive quality improvement training to help the overall upward development of the enterprise.In the process of training, the advanced experience of foreign industry development should be properly introduced to fill the shortage of China's air cargo logistics development.