NXLHS- I think that your post is speculative and not actually accurate. What I think is that everything in China is run by dozens of different commitees, which behave as interest groups, it is a very complex system which is not really a dictatorship because no individual has that level of authoritarian power.
Aviation has numerous commitees within the CAAC, which often work against each other. whilst one group may believe that it is in the interest of growth in china to hire foreign pilots another may not. Any incident that involves a foreign Pilot empowers the groups that do not want foreign Pilots. There is also a culture of blame in China, which can work against the hiring of foreign Pilots and it is this that has brought about changes to the CAAC medical, making it very difficult to pass. Apparently last year a Captain had a stroke, the conclusion of the investigation placed some blame on CAAC medical department. Their response was to say well if there is any risk at all that a Pilot may become incapacitated, no matter how miniscule, he will not have a CAAC medical, in conjunction with this they added further tests including an MRI and CT scan.
As for the simulator failures which are numerous, the face saving part of the culture, has the Chinese believe that their local pilots are the best in the world and in order to demonstrate this local pilots have to pass sim checks whilst foreign pilots fail.
Last edited by kungfu panda; 25th Dec 2012 at 21:01.