On July 1, 2026, the newly revised Civil Aviation Law of the People's Republic of China will officially come into effect, setting clear rules for the development of low altitude economy in terms of airspace planning, hardware construction, and industrial support. The new law specifies that airspace division should take into account civil aviation operations, national defense security, industrial development, and public interests, in order to achieve safe and efficient utilization of airspace resources; At the same time, strict standards are established for the qualification, verification, and operation of supporting equipment such as low altitude communication, navigation, surveillance, and meteorology, in order to strengthen the foundation of flight safety. In addition, the law explicitly supports the development of general aviation and encourages local governments at or above the county level to take measures to support the development of the general aviation industry based on the actual development of their respective regions; The State Council and provincial governments need to formulate special plans, improve supporting policies, continuously optimize low altitude airspace configuration, improve airworthiness, flight management and other institutional systems, and encourage technological innovation and scenario implementation.
The warm breeze of policies continues to blow. On May 8, 2026, the General Office of the State Council released the "2026 Legislative Work Plan of the State Council", which clearly prepared to formulate the "Airspace Management Regulations". The new law, combined with subsequent special legislation, forms a complete legal support system. In this context, as the core digital base of the low altitude economy, low altitude intelligent connectivity will usher in new opportunities for technological upgrading, industrial expansion, and scenario implementation.
Taibo Think Tank believes that the implementation of the newly revised Civil Aviation Law marks a new stage of rule of law in China's low altitude airspace management. The core breakthrough lies in establishing a dynamic management mechanism for classified and graded airspace, clarifying the airworthiness certification standards for unmanned aerial vehicles, and regulating cross-border data flow. This regulation will systematically unleash the potential of low altitude economy. According to Taibo data monitoring, the scale of low altitude economy industry will reach 680 billion yuan in 2025 and exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2028, with logistics distribution and urban air traffic becoming the main growth poles. It is recommended that local governments prioritize the layout of digital air traffic control infrastructure, and enterprises need to strengthen their airworthiness compliance and data security systems to seize the development window period.
1. Core viewpoint
Low altitude intelligent connectivity has gone through four major stages of development and is currently in a critical cycle of system integration. Low altitude intelligent connectivity has a clear evolutionary path: from 2010 to 2023, the industry completed breakthroughs in single point technologies such as Beidou positioning and unmanned aerial vehicle remote control, and established a national low altitude flight three-level support system for exploration and accumulation and system construction; From 2024 to 2027, we will enter the stage of system integration and application exploration, with the industry's focus shifting towards low altitude digital base construction and multi-source data fusion, achieving an upgrade from "manageable and controllable" to "collaborative and optimized". This is also the current stage of the industry; From 2028 to 2030, we will enter the stage of intelligent evolution and collaborative operation, with the gradual popularization of AI scheduling and global intelligent networking, and the commercialization of urban air traffic; After 2030, we will move towards global integration and autonomous operation, forming an integrated intelligent network of air, space, earth, and sea, and becoming an important infrastructure for smart cities.
Layered layout of the entire industry chain, and collaborative construction of industrial closed loops between upstream, midstream, and downstream. As the underlying support, the upstream includes the integrated perception network of air, space, and ground, computing power cloud services, as well as physical facilities such as general aviation airports, takeoff and landing stations, and energy stations, to meet the operational requirements of low latency, high bandwidth, and full coverage in low altitude scenarios; The midstream is the core hub of the industrial chain, relying on the two major sectors of digital twin airspace and air management services to complete core tasks such as airspace modeling, dynamic data fusion, and flight control; Downstream is the carrier of value landing, covering multiple scenarios such as G-end public emergency, B-end production operations, C-end manned transportation, and low altitude consumption. At present, the overall framework of the industrial chain has taken shape, but cross subject collaboration and unified standards still need to be improved.
There is a clear differentiation in the technical team, with mature technologies being scaled up and cutting-edge technologies waiting to be broken through. Based on the technology maturity curve, there are significant differences in the development stages of different types of technologies. Beidou high-precision positioning ADS-B、 Technologies such as low altitude 5G optimization have entered the mature stage of production and become a universal basic capability in the industry; The core technologies of 5G-A sensory integration, urban level airspace digital twin, AI airspace management, etc. are in a stable climbing period and are currently the mainstream direction for landing applications; Technologies such as blockchain airspace transactions and quantum encrypted communication are still in their early stages of exploration. The landing of low altitude intelligent connectivity technology is deeply influenced by regulations and airworthiness standards, and the improvement of rules will accelerate the commercial application of various technologies.
Gradient development of application scenarios, deep cultivation of existing resources, and steady expansion of increment. The maturity, demand, and potential of various applications of low altitude intelligent connectivity currently vary. Energy inspection and infrastructure monitoring have the highest maturity due to their necessity of reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and replacing high-risk operations; Agricultural and forestry crop protection, public services, and urban governance closely follow, and are important drivers of digital transformation in various regions; There is a strong demand for low altitude logistics, outstanding economic benefits, and enormous potential for future growth; Low altitude tourism and other consumer scenarios are still in the cultivation stage. The overall development pattern presents a comprehensive deepening of the drone stock market, with eVTOL following the path of first goods, then expanding increment.
II. Action Suggestions
· Innovate airspace management mode to achieve refined utilization of airspace. Drawing on the experience of ground traffic management and utilizing technologies such as digital twins, the low altitude airspace is divided into different altitude layers, grids, and digital routes, implementing precise management based on time, layer, and classification to improve the efficiency of airspace resource utilization. Establish a national or regional unified low altitude flight service platform, integrating functions such as airspace application, flight plan reporting, meteorological information, and intelligence services, providing users with convenient and efficient "one-stop" services, and reducing the threshold for compliant flights.
· Build a low altitude spatiotemporal intelligent base and move towards predictive decision-making. Evolved from building a "digital base" to a higher-level "spatiotemporal intelligent base". This positioning emphasizes that the essence of low altitude economy is the refined management and efficient utilization of three-dimensional physical space and time. Spatiotemporal intelligence "is the core of this foundation, which requires the system to not only perceive" what is and where "in real time, but also accurately predict" when and what will happen "based on spatiotemporal big data analysis. Therefore, the technological breakthrough path should focus on developing predictive decision-making algorithms and establishing a unified spatiotemporal data standard.
· Persist in prioritizing freight transportation and continuously explore diversified business models. Before the regulations and technologies for manned commercial operations mature, enterprises are encouraged to explore business models and accumulate operational experience by taking relatively low-risk freight scenarios as a breakthrough point. Encourage the deep integration of low altitude economic enterprises with automobile, real estate, Internet, culture and tourism, insurance and other industries, and jointly develop a new business type of "low altitude+". For example, exploring the connection mode between air traffic and ground traffic, developing innovative insurance products based on drone remote sensing data, etc.
· Build a data asset system to promote the compliant circulation and monetization of data. Low altitude data is the core asset of the low altitude economy. Construct a "Low altitude Data Asset Value Evaluation Model" that comprehensively considers multiple dimensions such as timeliness, accuracy, coverage, scarcity, and compliance of data, and quantifies the valuation of different types of data assets. On this basis, combined with trusted technologies such as blockchain, it is expected to form a compliant data exchange or circulation platform, realizing the safe circulation and value realization of low altitude data assets between different industries, which will open up a new trillion level market.
- The content and related data in this article are all sourced from the recently released"White Paper on Low Altitude Intelligent Connectivity Technology and Applications (2026)"(Click on the text to jump).
