Low altitude, lofty ambitions
China is betting on its army of civilian drones to help it drive new sources of growth, writes the Financial Times’ William Langley.
The country dominates the production of commercial drones, accounting for 70-80 per cent of global supply, according to analytics provider Drone Industry Insights.
There were about 2.2mn drones registered with the Civil Aviation Administration of China by the end of last year, deployed to do everything from controlling crowds to fighting fires.
But Beijing’s ambitions go much further than that. The CAAC expects the market size of the low-altitude economy — which refers to airborne activities occurring less than 1,000 metres above ground — to grow fivefold to Rmb3.5tn by 2035.
That means finding new uses of the technology from private companies. The logistics and food delivery sectors are early adopters, with Meituan and its rivals already employing unmanned aircraft on some routes.
The country’s farms are also big users. About a third of industrial drones are also used in agriculture or forestry, according to 2022 figures from the Guanyan Tianxia Data Center.
But some in the highly competitive UAV industry say that it will be difficult to replace the buying power of big government and military buyers, while strict export controls have limited their potential reach overseas.