The Trump administration has condemned as "Orwellian nonsense" China's insistence that U.S. airlines refrain from listing Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate countries. The words are strong, but its leverage is weak.

China's aviation sector, once a global laggard, is on track to be the world's biggest market. Its growth has empowered the nation's regulators and airlines — and eroded the clout of traditional aviation powers such as the United States. For U.S. carriers keen to get a piece of this growing pie, that means flying by China's rules. And for the Trump administration, that presents an increasingly common and difficult problem: how to rebalance an economic relationship that's tilting away from the U.S.

In aviation, as in other industries, the tilt has happened quickly. For decades, U.S. passengers and airlines were the dominant force on routes between the two countries. To an extent, traffic reflected American tourist and business interests; money flowed from West to East. As recently as 2011, U.S. carriers flew almost twice as many flights to China as vice versa, and 70 to 80 percent of passengers were Americans. But in the summer of 2015, Chinese airlines surpassed U.S. competitors for numbers of flights and seats flown for the first time. These days, the passenger split is roughly equal.