Taipei - As the application of drones in logistics, delivery, and air taxis is gradually implemented in Chinese cities such as Shenzhen, the "low-altitude economy" that China has vigorously promoted in recent years is ready to go. China's National Development and Reform Commission recently released a report saying that the low-altitude economy is expected to become a new economic track worth trillions of yuan, and it is expected that the talent gap for drone pilots will reach one million. However, industry insiders and netizens have different reactions to this. Some people are optimistic about the market prospects, while others question the limited actual job opportunities.
Taiwan's military experts are concerned that China is leading the world in developing the low-altitude economy. If it achieves economies of scale, in addition to creating new growth momentum in the future, it will also inevitably move towards military use and connect with future wars. The lethality of its drone army may be unimaginable.
The most mature track of China's low-altitude economy is agricultural plant protection drones, with a market size of more than 3 billion yuan (about 400 million US dollars), far higher than the application scenarios of instant delivery, logistics, and emergency rescue, which are only about 100-400 million yuan in size.
According to official data, as of the end of 2024, there were more than 250,000 agricultural drones in China, operating an area of 2.67 billion mu, ranking first in the world.
The agricultural drone industry has become a red ocean
However, a agricultural drone pilot named Wang in Henan told VOA that due to low-price competition and too many competitors, this track has "passed its bonus period and is not very profitable," especially after the price of spraying pesticides per acre was halved from 8 yuan. He expects to work for another one or two years before having to change careers and find a way out.
Wang, a plant protection pilot, said: "At the lowest, they are now doing it for 3 or 4 yuan (RMB), and basically they don't make money! At this price, not many people do it. Some (pilots) are new to the industry and don't have much business, so they will do that job."
He said that he has been working as a full-time plant protection pilot for more than five years. He flies a drone that can carry 100 kilograms. Each drone costs about 50,000 yuan, and it has to be replaced every two years. Therefore, if the plot is large, "hundreds of acres a day", and the unit price is 5 yuan per acre, it can still make a living. However, the technical content of plant protection pilots is not high. He estimates that in the future, farmers will have their own drones, and pilots may be forced to be laid off in large numbers.
Therefore, when the National Development and Reform Commission of China recently announced that "the shortage of drone pilots has reached 1 million", Wang, a plant protection pilot, suggested that young people think twice, because most low-altitude economic tracks are not mature and the prospects are unclear, especially since there are only a few hundred current recruitment positions in the market, and there are many people who have no work after passing the license.
He said that even the drone delivery service that Meituan Waimai has just launched uses fully autonomous fixed-point flight, and does not require a pilot at all. If a large number of locations are expanded in the future, delivery riders may be the next wave of unemployed people.
However, most food delivery operators do not seem to have felt this sense of crisis.
A Meituan Waimai recruitment manager in Hebei who did not want to be named told VOA that drone delivery is "still a long way off." Another delivery guy in Guizhou who also did not want to be named hurriedly said "no impact," meaning he did not want to talk about it anymore.
Will Meituan's drone delivery replace food delivery riders?
According to CCTV, during the Spring Festival and other holidays, Meituan's drone delivery was extremely busy. An employee operating on the top floor of Shenzhen Yitian Shopping Mall said that the center's flight to the Talent Park fixed-point pickup station 7 kilometers away is the most popular route, processing at least 300 orders a day, and with the command of the air traffic control center, only 2-3 "pilots" are needed to assist in loading goods and unloading and replacing batteries, which makes consumers who receive food quickly amazed and exclaim that it is full of future technology.
In addition to Shenzhen, it is reported that Meituan has opened more than 50 similar routes in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and according to statistics from the official website, a total of 250,000 orders have been delivered.
However, compared with the surprise of Shenzhen consumers, some Chinese netizens are not fully embracing the most typical delivery development of this "low-altitude economy". Many people gave negative comments in the Weibo comment area of CCTV's report.
For example, a Weibo user from Zhejiang Province, “Little Prince’s Star”, left a message: “What if something falls from high altitude? It’s not worth promoting.”
A user from Hunan Province, “6429492615”, also echoed: “That’s great, but I’m also worried. What if a small bomb is dropped? We must pay attention to the safe development of technology!”
A Weibo user from Guangdong Province, “SSSCCC-333”, was not happy with the commercialization of the technology. He wrote: “It’s impossible to have a 1% share in the next three to five years.”
A user from Hubei Province, “Chengbei Xugong 98”, made an even more pessimistic prediction: “Food delivery riders are about to lose their jobs.”
China is rushing to seize the "GDP in the sky"
The low-altitude economy refers to an emerging economy that uses manned and unmanned aircraft and auxiliary operating equipment as the main carriers to carry out low-altitude flights for multiple application scenarios such as cargo and passengers in the airspace within 1,000-3,000 meters vertically from the ground, radiating and driving the integrated development of related industries.
Since China listed 2024 as the first year of the development of the low-altitude economy, all provinces have included relevant policy goals in their annual work reports, determined to build "sky cities" in various places. At the end
of last year, the National Development and Reform Commission of China established the Low-altitude Economic Development Department, which is responsible for the planning and policy recommendations of medium- and long-term development strategies. In addition, six universities including Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and South China University of Technology have applied to add a "low-altitude technology and engineering" department to cultivate relevant talents needed for emerging industries.
According to the estimation of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the market size of China's low-altitude economy may reach 1.5 trillion yuan this year, and is expected to further rise to 3.5 trillion yuan by 2035. If it is really realized, it will be equivalent to immediately contributing 1.15 percentage points to China's economic growth (GDP) in 2025.
Pang Wei, secretary general of the Shenzhen UAV Industry Association, said that the low-altitude economy is a new economic development channel for China, and the industry is generally optimistic about the market prospects, because the low-altitude economy involves multiple industrial fields and will also give rise to emerging industries and create GDP from the sky.
Pang Wei told VOA: "If we want GDP from the sky, we must have new industries, and we must keep up with planning, talent training, and infrastructure construction. For example, through drone express delivery and logistics, it will improve work efficiency. (From) the perspective of economic development, we have actually counted that hundreds of industries will use this type of drone."
For example, he said, taking fresh fruits from the mountains in some remote provinces as an example, they can be transported directly to the city for fresh sales through drones, "reducing the workload" and "improving efficiency", and also raising the income of local farmers.
He also said that in the past decade, China has trained more than 200,000 drone pilots. Compared with the total number of 1.8 million drones registered nationwide, there should be a talent gap of more than one million, which has rapidly increased the enthusiasm of young people to pursue the "dream of becoming a pilot". Are
However, many netizens on the Chinese short video platform Douyin also complained about the statement that the low-altitude economy will "bring at least a decade of golden age" and "talent demand will explode."
For example, a Douyin user from Shanghai named “@浅浅读心星” left a message asking: “Will it become a red ocean again due to the rush of people?”
A Douyin user from Heilongjiang named “一棵的天空” also complained: “After I passed the mid-sized captain exam, I can’t find a job.”
But lucky ones like the Douyin user from Xinjiang named “身逼五分钟后被打人” left a message saying that after he passed the exam, he just started working, “with a monthly salary of 8,000 yuan and a lot of room for advancement.”
Of course, there is also a Douyin user from Guangdong named “冰浅看无柯菜” who joked that the skills of drone pilots can be used in both peacetime and wartime. He wrote: “Delivering takeout in my spare time and defending my country in wartime.”
In response, Pang Wei said that, like a university degree, a drone license is not a guarantee of employment, but having one more skill will increase job opportunities. When the low-altitude economy matures and more economic tracks emerge, job vacancies will naturally increase.
He also does not think that pilots will be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) in the short term, because he said that flying at low altitudes in densely populated cities, flying over crowds and buildings, requires higher safety requirements. Therefore, the complexity of the pilot's operations cannot be completely replaced by machines.
Is China training its drone army?
Wang Xiuwen, assistant researcher at the Institute of Political, Military and Combat Concepts of the National Defense and Security Research Institute in Taipei, analyzed that the Chinese government's efforts to promote the low-altitude economy and lead the world are in the right direction. Although it is still unknown whether the big pie drawn at present can be realized, if drones accumulate a certain amount of economies of scale from cargo to manned in the future, they will surely create more economic growth in the long run.
However, she is worried that China, as a major drone manufacturing country, is actively training a large number of pilots. If it manages the vertical take-off and landing aircraft in the country in the future, it will inevitably move towards military-civilian integration and add wings to the People's Liberation Army, enhancing its combat capability to deal with future wars.
Wang Xiuwen told VOA: "I think it (China) is just training its troops... Drones have many applications, and pilot training is only a part of it. There is a big gap now, so it urgently needs to train a large number of these pilots. These pilots are usually civilians, operating these unmanned or manned vehicles, but in the future, when they are converted, they can quickly become military or police."
She said that if China makes more breakthroughs in drone technology such as flight distance, battery life, and even mounting munitions, if the PLA's drone army takes off and lands from aircraft carriers near Taiwan to harass or attack Taiwan, or uses humanoid robots to land in Taiwan in the future, "that would be very dangerous."
Attribution: Content provided by Voice of America and translated from Voice of America Mandarin.
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