Singapore Technologies Aerospace is planning a components repair facility in China as its next move in a strategy to serve the country’s potentially enormous budget-airline sector. The company is taking a fairly long view, since the highly regulated Chinese market now has few budget airlines, and rules issued during the past year have made starting them harder.

Efforts by new competitors to enter the global jet commercial aircraft market seem certain to eventually spark trade friction, although at this stage the trouble is only brewing. It may not boil over for another 10 years or so. China and Russia are building large regional jets, Japan could launch a similar aircraft within weeks, and South Korean industry is pushing its government to support yet another. All those aircraft will or would compete against Embraer and Bombardier products, and all can be assumed to need government support.

If there is one aircraft market that is sure to balloon in the coming 15 years, it’s Chinese general aviation. An official study predicts the country’s fleet of general aviation aircraft will grow by the early 2020s to almost 10,000, a level 14 times the numbers employed at the end of 2006. We can take these figures seriously because there is every sign that the sector will soon be rid of its greatest encumbrance: highly restrictive military control of airspace.