I'm afraid I just can't let the claimants that Air China has a poor safety record get away without rebuttal.
CAAC had a lamentable safety record. I agree.
But - CAAC was a monolithic umbrella organisation underwhich the regional divisions operated their airlines as autonomous, self-managed entities. The Divisions were responsible for all the tasks that constitute "Airline Management" in near isolation from each other.
That is to say - the Beijing Division of CAAC was a totally seperate organisation (airline) to the Guangdong Division of CAAC.
All of the accidents that CAAC aircraft suffered are attributable to Divisions other than the Beijing Division. The Beijing Division had a flawless safety record when it became Air China.
Because of our western ignorance of the structure of CAAC in this regard it is tremendously easy to label the monolithic umbrella organisation as unsafe without recognising valid distinctions. In this case, Beijing Division of CAAC and latterly Air China were the rare and commendable distinction in China. It is accurate to state that Air China and it's predecessor organisation had a 47 year accident free record. It is through ignorance that such a claim appears incorrect.
Why are we able to distinguish good operators in bad regions (like Lan Chile in South America) elsewhere in the world, yet unable to see that similar distinctions might occur in China? We all know that whilst Asian carriers have a dispropotionate rate of accidents, this label excludes the Hong Kong and Japanese carriers which have excellent records and reputations. In this debate, until the other day Air China should have been in the correct category. Rather than being labelled "asian" as a kind of implicit insult, it should have been seen as a worthy and good example, like CX, KA, JL & NH are.