A part of the reason for the ATC delays (at least for en-route clearances) is because there are a lot of airways that are designated only for domestic flights which are not released for International traffic. These other airways are NOT depicted in the Jepessen charts, so you can be forgiven for assuming (incorrectly) that areas which appear to be open unused airspace should be empty when in fact they are full of domestic traffic. If you can, get a hold of the domestic airways charts from a local Chinese domestic carrier, and you'll see what i mean.
There are at least twice the number of airways within the country than would appear on the Jep charts.
PS - They're not all as daft as some make them out to be. In fact, some of them use this "duality" to their advantage. On more than one occasion, i've caught them descending a foreign flight only to assign his original flight level to a domestic guy. And since the coms was in Chinese to the domestic guy & English to the foreign traffic, the guy never even caught on that a number had been done on him...!
Last edited by gengis; 13th Jul 2009 at 17:19.