| Before 1980s, civil airports in China have been invested and managed as public institutions. Since mid-1980s, China started its "corporatization reform" trials at certain airports, which was to operate the airport as an enterprise.However, no matter operation under which system, the vast majority of Chinese airports were in financial loss. Despite that, the central government has been continuously building new airports and upgrading existing airports. During this process of continuous construction and financial loss, the central government has obviously felt the disadvantages within its airport investment and management systems. Since 2003, Chinese central government started to hand down its airports to local governments and inaugurated the airport corporatization reform program.It should be noted that the reform executed by the central government is a type of reform that involves two issues-airport ownership and airport management system. As the reform was undertaken without a systematic research of the two issues, the airport industry is in disagreement with it.In order to make a well-founded evaluation of the reform as well as to provide theoretical basis and practical experiences for further reforms, I have conducted a systematic examination of the airport investment and management systems of some countries with advanced aviation industry. Through comparison and analysis, I have come up with two models, i.e. the US model represented by US airports and the UK model represented by UK airports, and have compared the two as follows:It can be seen from the above that US airports are oriented as public infrastructure and are invested by the government. The US reform is ownership hand-down so as to streamline the relationships between the federal and local governments with no change to the nature of the airports. The US airports have not adopted a corporatized management mode. Whereas UK airports are oriented as profit-gaining enterprises and thus can acquire their investment funds by listing in the stock markets. There is no hand-down from central to local governments, but direct privatization and listing in the stock markets. And because of this orientation, the UK airports have adopted a corporatized management mode.Based on the above international comparison and analysis, this thesis examines the disadvantages of China's 2-in-l airport reform program and explains through an airport profit model that the central government's uniform corporatization reform is not in accordance with the airport operation reality. According to the profit model, an airport can achieve profitability only after reaching a certain passenger volume, and only after achieving profitability can the airport undertake its corporatization reform. Therefore, CAAC may learn from the US to hand down its airports, but should deal with airport corporatization on a case-by-case base. For those airports with very small passenger volume during a long term, corporatization reform should not be imposed. In terms of airport management reform, CAAC has proposed the transformation direction from operational airport mode to managerial airport mode. In this thesis, I have also compared the management modes of the US and UK airports, and have come to the conclusion that, in terms of airport management system, what CAAC should do is to clarify the operation power of the airports, including airport operation and commercial operation powers, whereas to the issue of how to realize the value of operation power, it should be decided by the airport owners based on their orientation of the airport, not by the uniform rule of CAAC. Of course, CAAC may learn from other countries and impose uniform requirements in regard to airport operation power, but this can be carried out only after CAAC clarifies the operation power of the airports.
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