City in the Sky: Drones, Shenzhen, and the ‘Low-Altitude Economy’

This invitation to envision an aerial future appeared on Sina Finance in an article titled ‘2024, the First Year of the Low-Altitude Economy’ (PEDaily 2024). What it references is the first appearance of the term ‘Low-Altitude Economy’ in the Report on the Work of the Government presented to the National People’s Congress in January 2024, which signalled the aspiration to transform the airspace below 3,000 metres into a space that generates economic value. In the section titled ‘Major Tasks for 2024’, the report states the goal to ‘actively foster emerging industries and future-oriented industries’, which includes developing ‘new growth engines in fields such as biomanufacturing, commercial spaceflight, and the low-altitude economy’ (State Council 2024). Soon after this report, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued the ‘Implementation Plan for the Innovation and Application of General Aviation Equipment (2024–2030)’, proposing to promote the low-altitude economy to reach a market scale of RMB1 trillion by 2030 (PEDaily 2024).