~70%
Estimated global consumer drone share, one firm
DIR. EST · DJI
Home / Drones
Track 03 / 无人机
The sky below 1,000 metres just became real estate.
China already owns the consumer drone. Now it's treating low-altitude airspace as a national growth engine — building the rules, vertiports and aircraft for delivery, agriculture and the air taxi at once. This is industrial policy with rotors.
<1km
Airspace band designated as a strategic economy
POLICY '24–'25
Ag
World-leading fleet of crop-spraying drones
SECTOR TREND
eVTOL
Early certifications pursued for passenger craft
CHINA KEY TRACK
The dynamics / 关键动力
Hardware lead, policy runway.
The drone itself was solved years ago. The next decade is about turning the airspace into a usable, regulated, monetisable layer.
01
Shenzhen as the airframe capital
Motors, flight controllers, cameras and gimbals all sit within a short drive. That density made the consumer drone, and now feeds every new category.
02
Policy treats airspace as infrastructure
By naming the low-altitude economy a priority, planners unlock corridors, vertiports and standards — the unglamorous scaffolding commercial flight needs.
03
From toys to logistics to people
The arc runs imaging → agriculture → parcel delivery → passenger eVTOL. Each step reuses the same supply chain and regulatory groundwork.
Who to watch / 关注名单
The fleet.
DJI 大疆
EHang 亿航
XPeng AeroHT 小鹏汇天
Autel 道通
XAG 极飞
Meituan Drone 美团无人机
Questions answered / 问答
What people ask us about China drones.
Why does China dominate the drone market?
One Shenzhen company, DJI, captures an estimated majority of the global consumer and prosumer market — built on Shenzhen's electronics supply chain, fast iteration and aggressive pricing. China also leads in agricultural and industrial drones.
What exactly is the "low-altitude economy"?
It's commercial activity in the airspace below roughly 1,000 metres: drone delivery, aerial surveying, agriculture, passenger eVTOL and inspection. China has designated it a strategic sector and is actively building the regulation and infrastructure around it.
What is eVTOL and who leads it in China?
eVTOL means electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft — air taxis and cargo craft. Chinese movers such as EHang and XPeng's flying-car unit are among the earliest pursuing certification and commercial routes.
Can foreign firms compete with DJI?
It's hard on price and harder on supply chain, which is why most challengers focus on enterprise niches, defence-adjacent use cases or markets where procurement rules favour non-Chinese hardware. We track where those openings actually exist.
Go deeper / 深入
Get above the low-altitude hype.
Our drones track separates funded, flying programs from press-release aircraft — with the supply-chain reality underneath.