To attract China business is getting more important to Britain.
London mayor Boris Johnson on Monday backed a major plan for a new hub airport for London in a bid to attract Chinese business.
In a speech to the leading business organization the Institute of Directors (IOD) in central London, Johnson said that "the global economic geography is shifting," and that the "old order is passing," adding that British airports would be unable to serve the future business demands from China.
Johnson said, "In the next 15 years, 75 million Chinese households will enter the middle classes. It is a phenomenal market and we need our engineers to be able to hop on a plane and build their infrastructure."
Heathrow has 9,000 seats per week to the Chinese mainland on two routes, while Frankfurt offers almost twice the number of seats and serves four destinations; Amsterdam serves six.
Last year,
France and Germany each managed to attract between 500,000 and 700,000 visitors from China while Britain attracted 127,000.
In addition London has no direct connections to 12 Chinese mainland cities, such as Wuhan, that are expected to be among the 25 world mega-cities by 2025.
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