The National Development and Reform Commission released a comprehensive action plan in October 2025 that treats low-altitude operations as fundamental urban infrastructure rather than experimental aviation. Titled "Action Plan for Deepening the Development of Smart Cities and Promoting Global Digital Transformation," the document sets a 2027 deadline for building over 50 digitally transformed cities while establishing the data infrastructure that autonomous aircraft and drone operations depend on. This represents a total departure from how Western countries approach the same challenge. The United States and Europe treat urban air mobility primarily as an aviation certification problem. China instead embeds it within a comprehensive urban data governance framework. This difference in policy philosophy produces different industry outcomes: Western aviation focuses on aircraft safety certification as the primary gate to deployment, while Chinese smart city policy requires urban systems integration as a prerequisite for safe operations.
Infrastructure Mandate
The National Development and Reform Commission directs cities to deploy "low-latency, high-frequency, high-reliability and high-safety reasoning computing power" specifically to support autonomous driving and low-altitude economy applications. This requirement signals operational priorities that diverge sharply from traditional aviation. Conventional air traffic control relies on centralized operations with human controllers managing relatively sparse data streams. The Chinese model envisions distributed processing where aircraft, infrastructure, and urban management systems continuously exchange high-frequency data to enable instantaneous airspace allocation.
Shenzhen constructed what local officials describe as China's largest 5G-advanced low-altitude communication and sensing network, providing the connectivity backbone for the unprecedented flight volumes the city now manages. Since 2023, this network has supported 780,000 commercial cargo drone sorties. That operational scale matters not as a publicity figure but as evidence of system maturity. The sorties span diverse scenarios: business district deliveries, cross-sea logistics, campus operations, and high-value commodity transport. When a cargo drone flies from Shekou to Zhongshan covering 71.7 kilometers across open water in 45 minutes, the system must coordinate with maritime traffic, weather monitoring, coastal security, and destination logistics in real time. This coordination demands data infrastructure that most global cities have not yet constructed.
Shenzhen implemented a specialized low-altitude economy regulation in February 2024 establishing a layered, categorized airspace management model. The SILAS platform demonstrates how this operational model works. Flight operators submit applications through the system, which analyzes potential conflicts and allocates airspace automatically. Shenzhen's municipal approvals encompassed 203 active urban air mobility routes and 121 dedicated takeoff and landing points throughout 2024. These approved routes and facilities represent overall municipal infrastructure approvals rather than SILAS system processing capacity alone. The distinction matters for technical precision: SILAS handles flight application workflow and airspace allocation, but the 203 routes and 121 points reflect the cumulative municipal approval framework within which the platform operates.
The action plan mandates that cities build "urban intelligent hubs with unified planning, unified architecture, unified standards, and unified operation and maintenance". For low-altitude operations, this requirement means integrating flight data with traffic management, emergency response, environmental monitoring, and commercial logistics systems as a unified infrastructure layer rather than as disconnected applications. This integration approach enables the speed and efficiency that commercial operations demand.
Market Development Through Policy Coordination
Measurable commercial viability demonstrates that China's low-altitude economy has moved beyond policy aspirations. The Civil Aviation Administration of China reported that the low-altitude economy reached 505.95 billion yuan in 2023, growing 33.8% year over year. The same authority projects the sector will reach 1.5 trillion yuan by the end of 2025 and climb to 3.5 trillion yuan by 2035. These official projections should be understood as expressions of government policy ambition rather than independent market forecasts, and they assume implementation proceeds smoothly across hundreds of municipalities with varying technical capacity and resources.
Shenzhen attracted over 1,900 enterprises concentrated in the low-altitude economy, creating what analysts describe as the world's most complete ecosystem for the low-altitude industry chain. The city's industrial output from major low-altitude enterprises exceeded 21.38 billion yuan in 2024, rising 26.4% year over year. These metrics reflect coordinated policy implementation across multiple levels of government. The December 2024 establishment of the Low-Altitude Economy Development Division within the National Development and Reform Commission formalized coordination that had operated through informal channels. All 31 Chinese provinces subsequently incorporated low-altitude economy development into their regional plans.
The smart cities action plan adds another dimension by directing cities to "support the moderate and advanced layout of low-altitude data infrastructure in qualified areas". This language signals that infrastructure development should anticipate demand rather than react to it. Shenzhen exemplifies this anticipatory approach, implementing regulatory frameworks that enable commercial operators to scale operations predictably rather than navigating case-by-case approvals.
The action plan explicitly directs cities to "integrate the data industry with low-altitude economy, autonomous vehicle operations, and embodied intelligence". The National Development and Reform Commission treats data as a production factor that, when properly structured and shared, enables multiple technology industries to mature simultaneously. Drone logistics companies, autonomous vehicle manufacturers, and robotics firms all draw from the same urban sensor networks, computational infrastructure, and data pools. This multiplier effect accelerates development across all three sectors.
Operational Scale and Commercial Deployment
Western observers frequently focus on Chinese policy ambitions while discounting operational realities. The smart cities action plan matters precisely because it addresses the implementation challenges cities face when moving from pilots to sustained commercial deployment.
Shenzhen's 780,000 autonomous aerial sorties since 2023 represent routine commercial operations that generate revenue and serve actual market demand. In Shuibei, China's largest gold and jewelry trading hub, dedicated autonomous aircraft corridors reduced traditional 30-minute ground transport times to 12 minutes. These operations are not technology demonstrations or controlled trials. The shift from experimental to operational represents the critical juncture most cities struggle to achieve.
The action plan directs cities to "promote the application of drones and robots in public safety, emergency rescue, and other fields". Guangzhou and Hefei operationalized this directive in March 2025. EHang General Aviation and Heyi Aviation received Air Operator Certificates on March 28, 2025, which authorized commercial eVTOL operations using EHang's autonomous EH216-S aircraft. These certificates represent regulatory authorization to conduct commercial service. Operations began with limited sightseeing flights conducted in controlled areas within designated zones. The distinction between regulatory authorization and widespread commercial deployment matters: the certificates enable future service expansion but do not indicate that full-scale urban air taxi networks operate today.
Infrastructure development tracks official ambitions proportionally, though the actual construction timeline remains uncertain. According to the February 2025 Global AAM/UAM Market Map, approximately 1,504 vertiports are planned worldwide, with China accounting for more than 50% of this total, roughly 752 planned facilities. However, the same report estimates that only approximately 980 of the 1,504 planned vertiports globally will actually be constructed between 2025 and 2029, reflecting attrition from program failures and delays. Shenzhen alone targets 1,200 platforms by 2026, but these vary dramatically in sophistication, ranging from basic landing pads to comprehensive passenger terminals with maintenance capabilities. The substantial gap between planned facilities and realistic construction projections reflects the persistent challenge of coordinating infrastructure investment with uncertain demand across multiple municipalities.
Data Infrastructure Foundation and Integration
The National Development and Reform Commission establishes explicit technical requirements for supporting low-altitude operations within the innovative city framework. Cities must build unified data platforms connecting aircraft, infrastructure, and urban management systems. Shenzhen's 5G-advanced network provides the backbone for this integration, but most Chinese cities outside the eastern coastal zone lack comparable infrastructure.
Guangzhou constructed a City Information Modeling platform covering 7,434.4 square kilometers that simulates flooding scenarios by incorporating rainfall intensity, topography, and sensor data from rivers and pipelines. Extending this capability to low-altitude operations means cities can model how unmanned systems should reroute during extreme weather, establish emergency landing zones, and coordinate aerial and ground emergency response during disasters. This simulation capacity enables anticipatory operational planning rather than reactive crisis management. However, constructing equivalent CIM platforms requires computational resources that exceed current capabilities in most municipalities.
The smart cities action plan addresses this requirement by directing cities to "optimize and transform computing power facilities" and "provide inclusive and convenient data services". For priority industries like low-altitude economy and autonomous driving, the directive specifies "low-latency, high-frequency, high-reliability and high-safety reasoning computing power". This computational infrastructure remains expensive and concentrated in prosperous eastern provinces. Smaller and less affluent cities face genuine uncertainty about whether they can justify such investment for the limited near-term operational demand.
The action plan requires cities to "strengthen data security governance" and "establish and improve the data security risk prevention and control system". Balancing the comprehensive data integration that enables low-altitude operations with legitimate privacy protections remains genuinely uncertain. Critics note that innovative city technologies in China connect closely with surveillance programs, and extending these systems to autonomous aircraft operations raises additional concerns about how flight data feeds into broader monitoring infrastructure. The security and privacy framework the National Development and Reform Commission has outlined does not yet resolve these tensions.
Regional Coordination and Cross-Border Operations
The action plan emphasizes "cross-regional sharing of digital services" and directs cities to "strengthen the coordinated digital development of modern urban agglomerations and metropolitan areas". For low-altitude operations, this proves intensely challenging because many commercial routes cross jurisdictional boundaries.
Shenzhen's cross-sea routes to Zhongshan cross municipal boundaries, requiring coordination among two city governments, maritime authorities, and aviation regulators. The Greater Bay Area encompasses Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau, and nine Guangdong cities, creating an exponentially more complex coordination challenge. Zhuhai launched trial helicopter air-taxi routes linking towns across this region, cutting intercity trips from three hours by road to approximately 30 minutes. Making these operations routine rather than experimental requires precisely the data infrastructure integration the action plan mandates. When the document directs cities to build "data infrastructure interconnections" and "promote efficient flow of data across domains", it addresses the practical challenge of enabling aircraft to transition from one city's airspace management system to another's without manual intervention or redundant approval processes.
The implementation timeline extends this coordination logic to national scale. Currently, each city or province manages autonomous aircraft operations under its own regulatory framework and data systems. By 2027 through 2028, the action plan calls for infrastructure "covering major cities" that enables "large-scale data sharing and cooperation". By 2029, the projection anticipates unified national data infrastructure achieving "efficient data circulation" across municipalities. These timelines assume coordination problems remain manageable and that computational and regulatory systems achieve interoperability on schedule. For low-altitude operations, this timeline suggests that aircraft should move across China with the same ease that vehicles cross provincial highways, but sustained coordination difficulties across municipal governments and varying technical standards could delay these outcomes by years.
Standards and International Implications
The National Development and Reform Commission mandates that China "establish maturity standards for digital transformation" and "promote standardized and high-quality urban digital transformation". When Chinese cities adopt consistent approaches to low-altitude data infrastructure, airspace management, and operational procedures, they establish de facto technical standards that other countries may find difficult to ignore.
The State Administration for Market Regulation published mandatory drone reliability standards that took effect June 1, 2024. Early performance data from operations conducted after implementation indicates improvements: 25% increase in mean time between failures, 50% reduction in failure rates in urban settings, 40% reduction in test flight accidents, and 20% shorter test flight periods. These represent early results collected during the first year after standards implementation, not long-term validated improvements. The evaluation period remains too brief to confirm whether these benefits persist or stabilize at different levels as industry practice adapts.
China actively exports smart city technologies including low-altitude capabilities. Chinese firms completed infrastructure contracts valued at approximately 142.99 billion USD across Belt and Road Initiative countries during 2024 through mid-2025 combined. The first half of 2025 alone generated 66.2 billion USD in construction contracts and 57.1 billion USD in investments. When these projects incorporate Chinese approaches to urban air mobility, they extend China's operational model globally. Cities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa adopting Chinese smart city platforms inherit Chinese assumptions about how autonomous aircraft operations integrate with broader urban systems. Over extended periods, this creates technical path dependencies making it increasingly efficient for international operators to adopt Chinese standards rather than maintain multiple incompatible approaches.
Military-Civil Fusion and Dual-Use Technologies
China's military-civil fusion strategy treats technologies developed for commercial applications as inherently dual-use, creating benefits for both military operations and civilian commerce. Unmanned aerial vehicles represent the most representative products of military-civil fusion. Recent analyses indicate that the People's Liberation Army's drone fleet exceeds that of the United States and Taiwan combined by approximately tenfold. This advantage stems partly from manufacturing scale, as companies like DJI and AVIC produce unmanned systems at rates comparable to consumer electronics manufacturing. But the advantage also derives from operational experience gained through commercial deployment.
When Shenzhen processes 780,000 drone flights annually, Chinese manufacturers accumulate performance data, identify failure modes, and refine operational procedures at scales that purely military programs cannot achieve. The smart cities framework strengthens this connection. When cities deploy comprehensive sensor networks, establish unified data platforms, and build low-altitude communication infrastructure, they create capabilities serving both civilian and military applications. The same digital infrastructure enabling commercial drone deliveries supports military autonomous aircraft operations. The same urban air traffic management systems coordinating package logistics can coordinate swarm operations. The action plan's requirement that cities build "urban safety risk monitoring and early warning systems" and "establish information-sharing and emergency linkage mechanisms" creates data flows that military planners find operationally valuable.
Understanding how unmanned systems perform in complex urban environments, how weather affects operations across thousands of flights, and how to coordinate multiple simultaneous aircraft provides insights directly applicable to military scenarios. This operational learning represents a structural advantage that accumulates continuously as commercial deployment expands.
Implementation Challenges and Realistic Assessment
The smart cities action plan sets ambitious targets: 50 or more cities achieving digital transformation by 2027, national data infrastructure operational by 2029, and modern cities with international competitiveness by 2035. Implementation confronts significant obstacles that merit direct acknowledgment rather than minimization.
Technical standardization, while improving, remains incomplete across municipalities. The State Administration for Market Regulation reported that drone reliability standards implemented since June 1, 2024 reduced failure rates in complex urban settings by half and shortened test flight periods by 20%. These improvements demonstrate progress from prior baselines. They also reveal the baseline challenges: before standardization, failure rates were twice as high and testing required 20% more time. Whether this coordination model proves scalable to lower-tier cities remains uncertain, as technical capacity varies significantly across municipalities. Major coastal cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai possess resources and expertise to implement comprehensive integration frameworks. Smaller municipalities in central and western provinces struggle to attract technical talent and justify expensive computational infrastructure.
Financial sustainability questions persist throughout the sector. Industry estimates suggest data infrastructure will attract approximately 400 billion RMB in direct investment annually, driving total investment of roughly 2 trillion RMB over five years. But many low-altitude economy companies, like their Western counterparts, have not yet demonstrated consistent profitability. The industry operates in what analysts describe as a state where approximately 60 percent reflects genuine commercial traction while 40 percent remains sustained through government policy support. Distinguishing between demand driven by actual market need versus demand sustained primarily through government policy proves difficult in practice. Some routes generate legitimate revenue; others depend on subsidies to remain economically viable.
Coordination complexity intensifies as implementation extends beyond first-mover cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou to smaller municipalities with less technical capacity and fewer resources to construct the required infrastructure. The action plan acknowledges this reality by directing localities to "act within their capabilities and local conditions". This flexibility may prevent overextension and regional financial strain, but it risks creating fragmentation that undermines the national integration the plan envisions. Provincial governments might standardize on different technical platforms, air traffic management systems, or data architectures. What Beijing designs as unified national infrastructure could fracture into regional silos without persistent enforcement and substantial additional investment.
Strategic Assessment
The October 2025 smart cities action plan matters for the low-altitude economy not because it announces fundamentally new initiatives, most of the technologies and policies described already existed in pilot form, but because it formalizes their integration into systematic urban infrastructure. The National Development and Reform Commission and its coordinating ministries treat low-altitude operations with the same institutional seriousness that cities apply to transportation networks or electrical power grids.
This approach produces outcomes that purely market-driven or aviation-focused strategies struggle to achieve. Operational scale in Shenzhen, regulatory coordination across provinces, infrastructure investment anticipating commercial demand, and integration with broader urban systems all reflect coordinated implementation now codified by the action plan. The 780,000 sorties completed since 2023, the 1,900 enterprises concentrated in Shenzhen, the 21.38 billion yuan in industrial output during 2024, and the first commercial eVTOL passenger service authorized in March 2025 demonstrate that this coordination model produces tangible results.
However, claiming that these outcomes represent inevitable policy success would overstate certainty. Implementation across hundreds of municipalities with varying capabilities, resolving data security and privacy tensions, achieving cross-regional coordination, and sustaining investment in infrastructure whose economic justification remains partially dependent on government support present genuine challenges. The 2027 through 2029 implementation window will reveal whether coordinated planning produces the comprehensive urban air mobility networks the action plan envisions or whether complexity, competing municipal priorities, and the genuine uncertainties about sustainable demand produce something more modest than current projections suggest.
For the global low-altitude economy, China's comprehensive infrastructure approach presents both opportunity and competitive challenge. Operational data, technological development, and infrastructure deployment accelerated through Chinese policy coordination benefits manufacturers and operators worldwide. Competitive pressure forces all industry participants to improve efficiency and reduce costs. But the model simultaneously establishes Chinese technical norms, standards, and expectations that may not align with approaches preferred in North America, Europe, or other regions. Over the coming decade, regional adoption of Chinese systems creates technical path dependencies. Those who build on Chinese platforms and standards gain operational advantages in growing market segments using those systems. This trajectory extends far beyond China's borders, reshaping the emerging global low-altitude economy.
