China has recently issued a regulation allowing domestic private investors to join in the civil aviation industry, Beijing Daily reported on Saturday.

"The civil aviation sector is capital-intensive," Yuan Yaohui, director of the policy and law department of the General Administration of Civil4 Aviation of China (CAAC) was quoted as saying. "China opened the civil aviation sector to foreign investors in 2002, and now it is time to further open it."

The agency welcomes domestic private capital to join in areas including cargo service, civil airport construction, jet fuel sales and storage, airplane maintenance, air-food production, computer-based air-ticket booking system, according to the paper.

But air traffic control system will continue to ban the involvement of private investors, according to the regulation.

Meanwhile, the regulation said private investors could not take a lion share in the country's three major airlines, including Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines.

Moroever, private investors could not take dominant shares in big domestic airports either, including airports of all the provincial capitals and nine other booming cities like Dalian, Shenzhen and Ningbo.

The new regulation will take effect as of August 15.

(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2005)