The Changsha Municipal People's Government held a press conference on August 6, 2025. It announced that the 2025 Hunan International General Aviation and Low-altitude Economy Industry Expo will open in Changsha and Zhuzhou from September 26 to 28. Over 2,000 domestic and international exhibitors and participants will gather to attend the low-altitude aviation event, seizing opportunities in the blue ocean of trillion-yuan market and discussing the future of the industry.

Themed "Developing the Low-altitude Economy to Lead a Better Life," the expo covers an exhibition area of 80,000 square meters and innovatively adopts a "1+2+10+6" operational framework. There will be one main event, namely the opening ceremony and the High-Quality Development Conference on the Low-altitude Economy Industry. The conference will focus on four key topics — policy, technology, scenarios, and ecosystem — to build industry consensus. Additionally, there will be two exhibition and demonstration events, ten special events, and six supporting events. These will cover advanced manufacturing equipment and application scenario demonstrations, renowned flight teams showcasing aircraft performance and diverse applications, low-altitude industrial chain ecosystem development, and model aircraft competitions, among other dimensions, to create a grand feast for the low-altitude economy industry.

The 2025 session has specially set up themed exhibition areas for Hainan Province and Hubei Province, and invited industry administrations, platform companies, and industrial parks from the central regions of China, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and western China to attend. This aims to establish a cross-provincial industrial chain closed loop encompassing "research and development-manufacturing-operation," and to promote the optimal allocation, deep integration, and precise matching of various resources across the entire upstream and downstream sectors of the general aviation and low-altitude economy industries.

Since 2024, the "low-altitude economy" has accelerated its transformation from an "industrial concept" to a "real productive force," forming a blue ocean of trillion-yuan market. Hunan is the first province in China to expand its pilot program for comprehensive low-altitude airspace management and reform. In recent years, Hunan has achieved significant results in policy support, infrastructure construction, industrial cultivation, and application scenarios. Since 2021, Hunan has hosted three sessions of the Hunan General Aviation Expo, attracting more than 1,000 companies from more than 20 countries to sign over 120 projects with cumulative contract values of nearly 70 billion yuan.

As the core pilot zone, Changsha has implemented a differentiated layout, arranging aircraft manufacturing in the Changsha Economic and Technological Development Zone, the drone logistics in the Yuhua Economic and Technological Development Zone, and eVTOL R&D in the Xiangjiang Intelligent Aviation New Town. A complete low-altitude economy industrial chain ecosystem consisting of "R&D-manufacturing-testing-application" has taken shape. Leading companies such as Falcon Aerospace, Sunward Technology, Tangzhi Science & Technology, and TransFuture Aviation have emerged and are accelerating their growth. In 2024, the total output value of the general aviation industry in Changsha increased by 25% year on year.

This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Yu Jiangjiang

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn