Peaceful year-end for China's airline industry still a dream away

December is a month for retrospection. It is the time of year when airline industry managers and pundits take stock of the most important events in the past 12 months and deliberate on strategic planning.

Or at least, it is meant to be. Last year, September 11 devastated the industry. This year, the events of the next four weeks may mark some of the most significant changes to the Greater China airline industry.

Opposition legislators in Taiwan - led by John Chang, the grandson of Kuomintang (KMT) generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek - have proposed a series of special cross-strait charter flights in time for the New Year festival. While speculation has heated up on acceptance by Beijing and Taipei for the plan, there is no certainty the plan can be carried through. Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), while paying lip service to approving Mr Chang's proposal, has thrown up as many roadblocks as it can to derail it.

What the DPP, or anyone else, could not have foreseen, though, has been the level of co-operation from Beijing for the proposal. Everything the DPP has managed to throw up to derail the charter flights has been considered and accepted by China as a prerequisite to the plan going ahead.

Indeed, Beijing has managed to make Taipei look petty at every turn. Who would have thought Beijing would bend so far backwards to accommodate the Taiwanese on the issue of resuming cross-strait air services?

The charter flights still may or may not happen, but the process has opened many eyes to the mainland's new strategy in coercing closer links with Taiwan. It has adopted an attitude of flexibility and pragmatism - flattery rather than force seems to be the weapon of choice.

Presidential elections are slated to take place in Taiwan within the next 18 months. To allow the DPP to take credit for having won direct links on its pro-independence terms, would this be a major stumbling block for Beijing's One China ambitions? Especially given that the present KMT leadership, including presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou, mayor of Taipei, have increasingly based their ambitions on promoting cross-strait ties.