Published on: 2026-04-13
Source: The People’s Republic of China in Russian –
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Beijing, April 13 /Xinhua/ — “Traveling along a 13-kilometer winding mountain road by car takes at least 25 minutes, provided you are lucky enough to avoid traffic jams, while a logistics electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) can reach the destination in just 8 minutes,” said Li Haitao, eVTOL operator at JD Logistics — one of the leading players in the express delivery sector in China.
Li Haitao is one of ten eVTOL management specialists at JD Logistics in Chongqing, who is oriented towards complex urban environments to handle a large volume of parcels.
JD Logistics has expanded the use of drones and eVTOLs in nine provinces, including Zhejiang, Qinghai, and Hainan, integrating them with local courier stations and delivery services in rural areas.
The company has launched around 50 delivery routes using drones or eVTOL across China. Only in Chongqing, there are 14 operational routes, providing the highest volume of cargo transportation in the country, with a total flight duration to one end of just 3 minutes.
2026 promises to be a year of large-scale changes for the logistics sector in China, many industry experts believe, noting that behind the “logistics of the heights” lies the rapid development of the “economy of the heights” as a strategically emerging industry of the Celestial Empire.
In 2024 and 2025, the “low-altitude economy” – a sector encompassing drones, eVTOLs, as well as related services, operating below standard airspace altitude – was included twice in the annual report on the work of the Chinese government, which indicates its important role in the country’s economic development.
Data shows that currently there are more than 36 thousand enterprises related to unmanned aerial vehicles in China. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) forecasts that the market volume of the small altitude economy in China may reach 3.5 trillion yuan (about 507 billion dollars) by 2035, which consolidates its role as a new factor in the country’s economic growth.
Currently, the “economy of small heights” accelerates the reconstruction of the logistics industry, and it is expected that its development will eliminate bottlenecks in mountain logistics, improve logistics efficiency, and reduce enterprise operating costs.
Facts prove that specific transport costs in some “low altitude logistics” scenarios are lower than in the traditional logistics model. According to preliminary data, the low altitude logistics model allows companies operating in this area to reduce operating costs by more than 30% and increase work efficiency by more than 50%.
As insiders believe, with the further expansion of the spectrum of application of “small height logistics,” such a type of transportation can be widely used for transporting valuable or emergency resources to hard-to-reach areas, such as mountainous regions, islands, remote areas, etc., to meet logistical needs in such spheres as e-commerce, medical services, and supply chain.
Chinese e-commerce platform Meituan has launched special delivery routes for medicines using “small-height logistics” in cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Suzhou. This concerns samples for medical examinations, blood, materials for emergency hospital medical care, special medicines, and other medical materials.
Delivery of medical supplies from the northern department of the “Zhenczi” hospital, affiliated with the Zhejiang University Cixi Hospital, to its eastern department using a drone takes only 8 minutes, which is more than 50% faster compared to the 19-minute delivery using traditional methods.
Having a whole range of such unique advantages as direct delivery, flexibility, and efficiency, “flying parcels” not only change the ecosystem of the last stage of delivery in cities, reduce traffic jams, and more accurately meet the needs of transporting valuable and urgent goods, but also effectively solve problems of high logistics costs, untimely delivery, and narrow focus on logistics services in remote areas, as well as create air channels in urban and rural logistics networks, contributing to the transformation and modernization of this important industry sector for the modern economy in the directionhigh efficiency, environmental friendliness, and accessibility.-0-
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