In the past decade, Air Transport Network of Chinese Mainland (ANC) maintained a significant expansion. Meanwhile, the high-speed rail network also experienced an explosive growth in China. The high-speed railway competition might lead to different evolutionary mechanisms and characteristics of ANC compared with other counties or regions. Based on the data of ANC during 2001-2014, both the airports and legs were divided into four grades by the k-means clustering method. It was noted that ANC experienced a substantial expansion and rapid growth during the period, while the high-speed railway exerted a profound impact on passenger volume growth of legs with a distance less than 1000km. Although the Centralization degree had appeared discrete since 2008, pyramid structures still existed in the volume of both airports and legs, which could be called an aristocratic network. Regional unevenness was momentous in ANC, which could not be completely explained by population and its density, economic level, et al. Geographic location together with high-speed rail network had exerted negligible impacts on ANC development and evolution. Under the context of the further expansion of high-speed rail network in China, it is proposed that, beside of demographic, economic, complex network science; the combined effect of geographic location together with high-speed rail as an alternative travel choice should be considered together when paying attention to ANC structural characteristics and its evolution.

CICTP