Booming low-altitude economy expands further

China has unlocked many new application scenarios for its burgeoning low-altitude economy sector, which has entered the rapid growth stage with a scale expected to reach 2 trillion yuan (about 279 billion U.S. dollars) by 2030.

The low-altitude economy is an economic concept that relies on low-altitude airspace, in which unmanned aircraft like drones, helicopters and flying cars play a dominant role. It involves economic sectors such as low-altitude flight, air tourism, passenger transportation, general aviation services, scientific research and education, among others.

In the first half of this year, China recorded over 600,000 newly registered drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the total number soaring 48 percent over the end of last year.

Now more than 14,000 drone companies hold a valid civil UAV operation certificate, and over 225,000 people possess the drone pilot license. Official data show that last year, the market size of China's low-altitude economy exceeded 500 billion yuan (about 69.85 billion U.S. dollars), with another 300 billion yuan (about 41.91 billion U.S. dollars) in new output value registered in the first six months of this year.

In less than a year after the Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2023 officially identified the low-altitude economy as a strategic emerging industry, the sector has further expanded in application scope and made many new technological breakthroughs.

Shenzhen City, an economic powerhouse in south China's Guangdong Province, has launched the country's first "low-altitude plus railway" intermodal transport service to facilitate people's traveling. Passengers can hail a helicopter through a few quick clicks on their cell phones when stepping out of a train station, which will take them less than one hour to almost any place they want to go in the sprawling Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

The service improves the travel efficiency by more than six times that of a conventional transportation mode.

"I think it's a very cool thing. I'd try many more flying routes in the future where conditions permit," said a passenger surnamed Dong.

"More and more people now hail 'aerial taxis' through the mobile app we have developed. In the future, we will iterate the current diesel-powered helicopter into an electric aircraft to control the airfare at about a few hundred yuan," said Cai Wuqun, general manager of the strategy department at the Shenzhen-based HELI-EASTERN, a low-altitude general aviation carrier and helicopter service provider.

With the booming low-altitude economy, there have emerged many new business modes, such as intra-city air travel, inner-city commute, and aerial tour of scenic areas across a city. In the first half of this year, Shenzhen alone posted 12,000 manned helicopter flights for various purposes, an increase of 20 percent year on year.

Low-altitude aircraft are transforming sci-fi movie scenes into reality, bringing new revolution to people's daily life. Not long ago, four university admission notices were delivered by a drone to a residential community in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, setting a record in the country.

During the just-concluded Paris Olympics, China-made drones staged a splendid and dazzling aerial show over the iconic Eiffel Tower by forming various patterns in the night sky, immersing global tourists in the magic created by Chinese technologies. In April this year, a Chinese civil UAV transported goods to a location at 6,000 meters above sea level on Mt. Qomolangma, shortening the delivery time from eight hours to only 12 minutes.

"As a representative of new quality productive forces, low-altitude economy is no longer just a new way of transportation, but can widely empower the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Its application scenarios become more diversified and the user experience is constantly bettered for people to enjoy a more pleasant flight," said Li Wenyu, director of the intellectual property and innovation development center at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

Booming low-altitude economy expands further

Booming low-altitude economy expands further

Booming low-altitude economy expands further

Booming low-altitude economy expands further

Shanghai, a leading force for Chinese modernization, is accelerating the pace of building itself into a science and technology innovation center with global influence.

The tech-savvy metropolis is now speeding up the transition from structure building to function strengthening. Taking strengthening the capability of fostering original sci-tech innovations as the main task, it is pursuing both sci-tech innovation and institutional innovation to significantly improve its comprehensive strength in science and technology as well as the overall effects of innovations.

Over the past 10 years since Shanghai began building itself into an international science and technology innovation center, it has reaped fruitful results in sci-tech innovation, which has pushed the metropolis' GDP across the 4-trillion-yuan (about 570 billion U.S. dollars) mark.

In 2023, Shanghai's total research and development expenditure accounted for 4.4 percent of its GDP, and the city's fiscal expenditure on science and technology rose by 36.7 percent to 52.8 billion yuan (about 7.47 billion U.S. dollars).

Driven by science and technology advances, Shanghai's industrial transformation has sped up. The combined scale of the three leading industries of artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and biomedicine in the city has reached 1.6 trillion yuan (about 226 billion U.S. dollars).

At the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Science City, Qinglong, an open-source general-purpose humanoid robot with a height of 182 centimeters and up to 43 active degrees of freedom, is being trained to pick up oranges.

"After some training, the robot will be able to complete this move by itself when it encounters a similar scenario in the future," said Shi Zhihua, trainer of robot Qinglong.

Thanks to an advanced control software, Qinglong can skillfully perform fast walking, avoid obstacles, go uphill and downhill, and resist impact.

"We plan to build a venue that can simultaneously train 1,000 robots by 2027," Shi said.

The Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), a third-generation medium-energy synchrotron light source facility with 46 laboratories, has been operating around the clock to serve researchers from around the country, whose experiments cover a wide range of fields such as life sciences, materials science and chemical catalysis.

"We are using the SSRF's light to observe the phase change process of this material when it's heated to 1,100 degrees Celsius," said Song Shuang, a PhD candidate of Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"Our team is developing materials for the energy sector," said Miao Zhikai, a researcher of Tianjin University.

"We are developing cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries," said Li Guodong, a researcher of Fudan University.

Though the laboratories at the SSRF have been running at full capacity, researchers still have to apply for them months in advance, reflecting the vibrancy of innovation in Shanghai.

Shanghai blazes sci-tech frontiers to boost innovation-driven modernization