CAAC (airline)

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CAAC (Chinese: 中国民航; pinyin: Zhōngguó Mínháng; lit. 'China Civil Aviation'), formerly the People's Aviation Company of China (中国人民航空公司), was the airline owned by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (which it inherited its common English name and acronym from). It enjoyed the monopoly status in the country from 1953 to 1987, before Deng Xiaoping's reform of separation of government and enterprise. The airline was founded on 17 July 1952, and merged into the CAAC on 9 June 1953. From 1987 until 1991, the monopoly was broken up and CAAC was split into six regional airlines, which nowadays became China's Big Three airlines: Air China (Beijing-based), China Southern Airlines (Guangzhou-based), and China Eastern Airlines (Shanghai-based).

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