China's airline operators plan to spend 280 billion U.S. dollars to purchase 2,900 new airplanes over the next twenty years, according to a forecast made by the Boeing Company in Shanghai on October 25.

By 2025, China will become the world's fastest-growing airplane market and the world's second biggest civil airplane market after the United States, said the Boeing report.

With the rapid expansion of travel and cargo market, the number of airplanes in China will quadruple to 3,900 in 2025.

Randy Baseler, vice president of the Boeing Commercial Airplanes, estimated that the aviation market in China will expand at an annual rate of 9 percent in the coming years.

Since 1990, the number of flights in China has increased by 13 times, but the number of airplanes has not kept pace, said Baseler.

The world airline operators will invest 2.6 trillion U.S. dollars in total in the coming two decades to purchase 27,000 new civil airplanes, said the Boeing report.

In a recent development, the Avibras, a Brazil-based regional airplane producer said here on October 24 that over the next twenty years China will need 590 regional airplanes capable of carrying between 30 passengers to 120 passengers.