China will further reform its investment mechanism and expand financing channels in absorbing foreign capitals into the air transport industry, a senior Chinese civil aviation industry official said Wednesday.

Speaking at a seminar organized by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), Yang Guoqing, deputy director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC), said that the current foreign investments in China's aviation projects were restricted to traffic control systems, but all projects related to air transport such as airports will be opened up to foreign investments in the future.

The Chinese government will implement reforms opening up more airports to international services, and relax regulations to allow the operation of budget airlines, he added.

Yang said that while following the trend of world airport development and taking account of China's realities, China is working on an airport layout that could meet the demand of its air transport growth.

China has since 1978 spent a total of US$15 billion to build airport and air traffic control facilities, he said, adding that China has built 48 new airports and renovated or expanded more than 80 others.

Over the past decades, China's aviation industry saw a rapid development, with air passenger traffic jumping from 2.31 million in 1978 to 87.59 million last year.

Currently, China ranks the fifth in total air traffic turnover just behind the United States, Germany, Britain and Japan.

In the first five months of this year, China's overall aviation transport turnover reached 58.86 billion yuan (about US$7.09 billion) and profits rose to 4.63 billion yuan (US$561 million), 3 billion more than that of the same period in 2002.