In 2026, the low-altitude economy was officially positioned as an emerging pillar industry, marking its third consecutive year being included in the Government Work Report. The intensity of the policy signals is unquestionable—from top-level national design to supporting documents from ministries and commissions, and from airspace management reform to special bond support for infrastructure, a complete policy toolkit is taking shape.
However, when confronted with a research report from the Yicai Research Institute of Cities, any observer focused on urban development cannot help but wonder: Among the 291 publicly available "15th Five-Year Plan" outlines for cities at or above the prefecture level, 257 cities have incorporated the low-altitude economy and general aviation into their layouts for emerging or future industries. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, this number was only 23.
In just five years, it has grown more than 10-fold.
What is even more striking is the proportion—257 cities account for 86.5% of the 297 prefecture-level and above cities in China. In other words, nearly 90% of Chinese cities have written almost identical industrial visions into their planning documents.
What Exactly Does This Mean?
On the one hand, it indeed reflects the appeal of the low-altitude economy as a national strategy. eVTOL, drone logistics, low-altitude tourism, urban air mobility... the industrial imagination space pointed to by these concepts is broad enough, and the prediction of a trillion-level market size is not groundless. Pioneer cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Chengdu have already formed preliminary industrial clusters in fields like complete machine manufacturing, core components, and operational services. These successful examples provide a referenceable path for latecomers.
On the other hand, the 86.5% participation rate also exposes a problem that cannot be ignored: there is a significant mismatch between the resource endowments and industrial foundations of most cities and the development requirements of the low-altitude economy.
The research provides a set of comparative data: among the leading and pillar industries that truly bear the current output and employment functions of cities at this stage, the top five are: food and agricultural product processing (149 cities), modern agriculture (145 cities), high-end equipment manufacturing (126 cities), cultural tourism (118 cities), and modern logistics (101 cities).
It should be noted here that the first and second places are precisely food and agricultural product processing and modern agriculture. This means that for nearly half of Chinese cities, what supports their economic fundamentals remains the most traditional primary industry and the initial processing links of the secondary industry. These cities may not even have a sufficient foundation for high-end equipment manufacturing, let alone the low-altitude economy, which requires extremely high comprehensive capabilities in aviation manufacturing, electronic information, new materials, and airworthiness certification.
This is not to say that agricultural cities cannot develop the low-altitude economy—in fact, plant protection drones and low-altitude agricultural material distribution are precisely among the most mature application scenarios of the low-altitude economy. But the key issue is: when a city positions the low-altitude economy as an "emerging industry" or "future industry," is it planning a feasible incremental track, or an industrial blueprint lacking substantive support?
Half changed in five years.
If the low-altitude economy layout of 257 cities were merely an isolated phenomenon, it might still be explained by the "rapid formation of industrial consensus." However, this research from the Yicai Research Institute of Cities reveals a more universal trend: the speed of track replacement in urban industrial planning is astonishingly fast.
Researchers compared the "14th Five-Year Plan" and "15th Five-Year Plan" outlines of 285 cities and found a staggering piece of data: on average, about 8 "14th Five-Year Plan" tracks per city did not enter the "15th Five-Year Plan" industrial system, while about 8 new tracks were added simultaneously.
In 5 years, the content of the industrial menu has been replaced by nearly half.
What does this mean? If a city planned 16 strategic emerging industry tracks in 2021, by 2026, half of them will have been replaced. This frequency can no longer be rationalized as "industrial iteration and upgrading." To truly complete the cultivation cycle of an industry—from investment promotion and enterprise landing to industrial chain supporting and forming scaled output—5 years is often not even enough to finish the "initial stage." Not to mention that many industries themselves require a cycle of more than ten years from technological R&D to commercialization.
The research also specifically points out: among the tracks listed as strategic emerging industries in the "14th Five-Year Plan" of many cities, a considerable proportion did not continue to appear in the "15th Five-Year Plan." In other words, these tracks "come and go" in the planning texts, but the actual industrial structure of the cities may not have undergone any substantive changes.
Behind this phenomenon lies a clear logic of local government behavior.
The first logic is the risk-aversion psychology of "not falling behind." When the central level positions a certain field as a strategic emerging industry, and when capital markets and the media collectively release optimistic signals, the pressure faced by local governments is real and urgent—if they do not follow up, they may be at a disadvantage in the next round of resource competition and performance evaluation; if they do follow up, at least they will not "fall behind" at the planning text level.
The second logic is the speculative mentality of "track dividends." Industrial tracks have "valuations" in the policy discourse system. If a city writes "buzzwords" like the low-altitude economy, humanoid robots, synthetic biology, and quantum information into its plans, it gains an extra narrative chip when competing for special funds, special bonds, and pilot qualifications from higher authorities.
The third logic is the path dependence and "templated" operations in plan compilation. Objectively speaking, the "15th Five-Year Plan" industrial plans of many cities heavily referenced higher-level plans, peer city plans, and consulting agency templates during the compilation process. When the low-altitude economy became a national-level buzzword, like ripples, it diffused from central plans to provincial plans, and then to prefecture and city-level plans, ultimately appearing in almost every text without distinction.
The risks of this decision-making logic are enormous.
The low-altitude economy is not an industry that can be made to work just by building a few charging piles and designating a few test flight airspace areas. It has extremely high comprehensive requirements for airspace conditions, aviation manufacturing foundation, professional talent reserves, and supporting infrastructure. An inland agricultural city has neither an aviation industry foundation nor an inflow of high-end talent, let alone sufficient capital density to support the cultivation of R&D enterprises—what does it have to develop the low-altitude economy? Even if forced to launch it, the final result is highly likely to be one of two: either it degenerates into bait-and-switch conceptual investment promotion, or after years of investment, it finds that the industry cannot form a closed loop, and fiscal funds precipitate into unrecoverable sunk costs.
What is even more worthy of vigilance is the opportunity cost. When a city concentrates a large amount of fiscal funds, land resources, and policy incentives towards a "hotspot" that mismatches its own endowments, it will inevitably crowd out the resources that should have been invested in industries truly suitable for itself. Those top five leading industries—food and agricultural product processing, modern agriculture, and cultural tourism—are precisely the fields that most need continuous investment and deep cultivation.
Similar lessons are not uncommon in the development history of Chinese cities. The "rush" in the photovoltaic industry followed by large-scale reshuffling, the overcapacity and idleness of new energy vehicle (NEV) production capacity, the high vacancy rate issues in big data industrial parks... after every "hotspot," what is left behind is not only the cheers of the successful but also the sunk costs of a large number of cities.
Concluding Remarks
In fact, as a national strategic industry, the development prospects of the low-altitude economy are certain. Shenzhen's drone industrial cluster, Shanghai's eVTOL R&D highland, Chengdu's aviation manufacturing foundation, and the Pearl River Delta's supply chain supporting capabilities—the layouts of these cities and regions are completely reasonable and highly forward-looking. What is truly worthy of vigilance are those cities that lack an industrial foundation and have mismatched resource endowments, yet still "fully enter the game" in their planning texts.
The core of the problem does not lie in "whether to develop the low-altitude economy," but rather in "in what way and on what foundation to develop it."
For cities with an aviation manufacturing foundation, talent reserves, and capital density, the low-altitude economy should be cultivated as a key strategic emerging industry, and can even be built as a future pillar industry. For cities with a certain industrial foundation but a weak aviation industry chain, the focus can be on the application scenario end of the low-altitude economy—such as operational service links like agricultural plant protection, power line inspection, logistics distribution, and emergency rescue—rather than blindly pursuing complete machine manufacturing. For most cities where agriculture, food processing, and cultural tourism are the leading industries, a more pragmatic approach might be: to plan the low-altitude economy as an enabling tool rather than an independent industry. Using drones to improve agricultural efficiency, using low-altitude perspectives to enrich cultural tourism experiences, and using general aviation networks to improve logistics timeliness—these "+ Low-Altitude" approaches are more suitable for their actual foundations than the grand narrative of "Low-Altitude +".
So how can cities correctly evaluate their own "resource endowments"?
Step one, take stock of the foundations. What does a city have? What kind of industrial foundation does it have? What kind of factor endowments? What kind of location conditions? What kind of talent reserves? The answers to these questions cannot rely on "I think," but must rely on solid industrial censuses and data analysis.
Step two, look at the market. Not looking at what is written in policy documents, but looking at where the real market demand is, where the gaps in the industrial chain are, and where the pain points of enterprises are. Policy is a weather vane, but the market is the touchstone.
Step three, calculate the costs. How much investment is needed to develop an industry? How long is the output cycle? How great is the risk? What is the opportunity cost? Only when these accounts are clearly calculated will decision-making not be blind.
Step four, take small steps and run fast. Rather than listing ten "future industries" in the planning text, it is better to focus on two or three directions that are truly well-conditioned to be done well, and cultivate them deeply over five years. Industrial cultivation is a marathon, not a 100-meter sprint.
What the low-altitude economy needs is "precise layout" rather than "blooming everywhere," and "adapting to local conditions" rather than "a thousand cities with the same face."
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