China is rapidly advancing plans to build a “low-altitude economy” where groceries are delivered to your door by drone and workers can avoid the crowds by taking flying taxis home. It sounds like science fiction, but Chinese planners are preparing the groundwork for just this “low-altitude economy”, and projecting the sector could generate up to CNY2 trillion ($280bn) in annual output as soon as 2030, Urban Land reports.

The initiative gained official backing in July 2023, when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a nationwide effort to develop low-altitude flight services, supported by state grants and investments. Authorities define “low altitude” as airspace below either 1,000 or 3,000 metres, depending on the application.

"We are currently in a testing phase, a transitional phase," said James Wong, global governing trustee for the Urban Land Institute and executive chairman of the Chinney Alliance Group, which specialises in aviation navigation systems. “It’s 1910, and we’re figuring out traffic rules.”

The push is emblematic of China’s ability to transform ambitious industrial targets into large-scale infrastructure in record time. In 2007, the country had no high-speed rail lines. Today, it has over 47,000 km of them. In 2009, fewer than 500 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold across China; in 2024, it produced 12.9mn – roughly 60% of global output, according to a recent EV report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“The way China’s government develops their five-year plans is very thoughtful,” said Alan Beebe, chief executive officer for the Urban Land Institute in the Asia Pacific and former President of the American Chamber of Commerce in China as cited by Urban Land. “Once the plan is developed, they tend to execute it on all levels, especially when it comes to industrial policies.”

Drone delivery services are already operational in cities such as Shenzhen. Meituan, a publicly listed e-commerce firm, completed more than 200,000 deliveries by drone in 2024, expanding its operations to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. “Customers come to kiosks to collect items once they’re delivered,” explained Geoffrey Moore, senior associate at global engineering firm Arup.

Despite these developments, experts caution that key technical and regulatory challenges remain unresolved. “Multirotor aircraft are very, very complicated – the way the air moves around them is incredibly complex,” Moore said. “Hopefully we won’t need to wait for the first major disaster before everybody wakes up to these issues.”

Electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) are central to the vision, with Germany’s Lilium NV partnering with Shenzhen Eastern General Aviation to supply 100 eVTOL jets for deployment in the Greater Bay Area. Plans also include joint development of vertiports and related infrastructure.

“The demand for eVTOL services will be highest in dense, crowded places, but for safety reasons, you want them in remote areas,” said Liuqing Yang, acting director of the Low Altitude Systems and Economy Research Institute at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou. “This is a delicate art,” she added.