Design wise Guangzhou airport is a carbon copy of Singapore Changi with lots of presently unused capacity. They have a massive home market and could probably kick off routes on the basis of locals traveling overseas and foreigners visiting the "factory of the world", there are some nice beaches and golf courses around Shenzhen, Hong Kong is an easy side trip.
Looking on the radar screen to the immediate north of us, the growth rate of air traffic is quite frightening.
Guangzhou and Hong Kong are now pretty much on par in terms of movements at around 1000 per day. If anything ZGGG is probably ahead now. Shenzhen just 20 miles north is averaging around 6-700. Macau is less than 20 miles to the west with another 120 odd.
Over Chinese New Year average daily movements in the combined Pearl River Delta terminal airspace (below 20,000 ft) would have been around 3000.
Movements are expected to top 5000 per day within a handful of years. So there's no misunderstanding, apart from a few bizjets, we're talking about nothing smaller than a B737/A320. At Hong Kong almost 70% of traffic is Heavy or Super. Wake turbulence separation kills runway movement rates.
Yes there are big delays in China but they are on an extremely steep learning curve- trying to do in 20 years what the US did in 70.
Take a look at the annual movements at Beijing. Just 3 years ago they were number 21 in terms of movements- now they are number 6 with about 540,000 movments p.a. For comparison, Sydney has a little over 300,000.
Sorry for the thread drift but just wanted to emphasize the impact that an increasing % of 1.3 billion people being able to afford to fly will mean.