Drones and autonomous vehicles, showcased at this year's international exhibition on transport technology and equipment in Beijing, have been transforming China's logistics industry and improving the quality of life.
The 16th International Exhibition on Transport Technology and Equipment, also known as China Transpo, opened on Sunday at Beijing's Shougang Park. Hosted by the Ministry of Transport, the three-day event drew over 80 leading companies and institutions from the transportation sector.
The exhibition saw companies showcasing their cutting-edge automation solutions, with a standout being a drone model capable of carrying up to 15 kilograms with a range of 120 kilometers.
The model has already been in use in Jiaxing, a city of east China's Zhejiang Province, delivering medical supplies and food, all monitored through a smart platform that tracks flight routes in real time.
For example, with drones transporting blood samples, villagers in the Sanxing Village of the city, who previously had to travel to city hospitals for lab tests, can have their tests done locally and receive results within two hours.
"Take liver function tests for example, we couldn't conduct such tests at our clinic. Now, with drones transporting blood samples to city hospitals, diagnostic efficiency has significantly improved. If we're short of medicine, the drones also quickly bring them from the hospitals," said Xu Jingfeng, a doctor of the Sanxing Village clinic.
Currently, Jiaxing has established six low-altitude drone delivery routes for medical supplies, covering major hospitals, community clinics and village health centers. Compared to traditional ground transport, drone deliveries cut transport time by nearly 60 percent.
Beyond medical deliveries, drones are also being used for food and parcel delivery. Even in scenic areas, tourists can get takeouts delivered by drones.
"Traditional food delivery takes at least 30 minutes. With drones, we save about two-thirds of that time. This year, we've operated 13 drone delivery routes, completing over 1,300 flights," said He Quan, deputy head of the Nanhu Research Institute for Future Transportation, dedicated to the study and application of smart transportation solutions.
While drones are boosting air deliveries, autonomous delivery vehicles are improving efficiency, particularly in handling the "last mile" of package deliveries on ground. Equipped with 11 cameras and three radar systems, these vehicles can detect traffic lights, lane markings and obstacles, completing a 4-kilometer delivery in just 10 minutes.
Today, smart technologies like parcel sorting robots, drones and autonomous vehicles have been integrated across China's major courier networks. With over 270,000 delivery vehicles in use, these innovations are reducing delivery times and helping move around 440 million parcels between urban and rural areas daily.
Drones, autonomous vehicles revolutionize logistics sector in China
Local authorities across China have leveraged their unique resource endowments to unlock over 1,000 new application scenarios so far this year in emerging sectors such as the marine economy and low-altitude airspace, fueling the development of new quality productive forces and creating fresh avenues for economic growth.
Driven primarily by innovation, new quality productive forces are characterized by high technology, high efficiency and high quality, and represent an advanced form of productive forces.
Not long ago, Zhanjiang City in south China's Guangdong Province unveiled 48 comprehensive application scenarios in the sector of the marine economy. With total investments exceeding 10 billion yuan (about 1.42 billion U.S. dollars), these projects span nine key areas, including deep-sea aquaculture, marine low-carbon technologies, and marine equipment manufacturing.
The application scenarios concerned are capable of offering large-scale testing grounds for cutting-edge technologies such as deep-sea equipment technologies and artificial intelligence.
"Previously, we would develop technologies first and then seek markets. Now, every technical challenge originates directly from real-world scenario demands. Once solved, the solutions can be rapidly deployed in industry, dramatically shortening the time required to turn sci-tech achievements into applicable technologies," said Hong Pengzhi, deputy director of the Zhanjiang Bay Laboratory.
Apart from the deep sea, new scenarios in the low-altitude domain are fueling development of the low-altitude economy on "aerial race tracks" in an accelerated way. In Jingdezhen City of east China's Jiangxi Province, four new low-altitude tourism routes have been launched, allowing visitors to have a bird's eye view of the city's famous ceramic heritage.
Continued deepening of the process of opening up application scenarios is playing a role in driving rapid expansion of the scale of related industries. According to official data, China's marine economy generated 7.9 trillion yuan (about 1.12 trillion U.S. dollars) in gross output during the first three quarters of 2025, up 5.6 percent year on year.
From January to June, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) logged 24.47 million flight hours, a staggering 149-percent increase over the same period of last year.
To support efforts for opening up application scenarios, local governments are all carrying out institutional innovations. For example, Guangdong has established a marine economy scenario innovation center, while Chengdu City in southwest China's Sichuan Province has allocated dedicated funds to support scenario-based applications.
"Opening up application scenarios is a key lever for unclogging the channel for converting research achievements into applicable approaches between science and technology on the one hand and industry on the other. Intensive rollout of diverse application scenarios in marine, low-altitude and urban domains not only gives full play to China's supersized consumption market advantages, but also provides real-world application environments and iterative opportunities for new technologies," said Wu Ze, deputy director of the industrial investment research office at the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID).
Chinese regions unlock diverse application scenarios to drive new quality productive forces
