By late April, Beijing residents who wanted a drone were already hitting dead ends. The Associated Press reported that Chinese online shopping platforms were blocking drone orders bound for Beijing addresses, and some electronics stores were racing to clear their shelves before the cutoff.
The city rules were due to take effect on May 1, according to Ars Technica, and they go well past sales. Renting drones is banned, and so is storing drones or their components inside the capital. The report called the citywide measures unprecedented. They arrive as authorities across China tighten drone regulations and enforce flight restrictions more strictly, which is striking in a country that effectively built the global market for affordable commercial drones.
Lizzi C. Lee, a fellow on the Chinese economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in New York City, said officials are refining the rules because “enforcement and rules have been uneven or unclear.” In her reading, Beijing is “experimenting with a more comprehensive, front-end approach.”
“What’s pretty notable here is that this is not just about regulating use but also about controlling the entire lifecycle—sales, transport, and storage—of drones,” Lee told Ars. “That’s a much more preventive, system-level approach to eliminating unauthorized drone activity rather than just policing them after the fact.”
Professionals feel it first
Rudaw, reporting from Erbil, described a revised set of regulations on uncrewed aerial vehicles that it said were announced in September. In its account, the ban on selling, operating, storing and transporting drones and certain key components in the capital starts on November 15. Exceptions cover authorized government work such as emergency rescue, disaster relief, counterterrorism and scientific research.
Owners, Rudaw said, must take their equipment out of the city or hand it to municipal authorities. A compensation scheme reportedly pays 30 percent of the original purchase price.
Xiaomi sales specialist Li Jia Xin told Rudaw the logic was geographic: “The laws have banned the sale of drones because Beijing has many military bases, and the issue has security dimensions.”
Working pilots took the hit. Liu Hao Mu, who flies drones for photography and has shot many TV commercials, said he used to fly with a permit and now cannot. “We have moved our equipment and drones to another city; we have no other options,” he said.
Film director Bai Xian backed the decision, saying the government weighs safety. “It will affect our work, but we can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to create aerial scenes of Beijing,” he said.
DJI, the Chinese manufacturer, was reported to be pulling drones from the displays in its Beijing outlets.
Sources
- Beijing bans drone sales even as rest of world buys Chinese drones
- Beijing bans drone flights over security concerns
