BEIJING - Chinese online life service provider Meituan announced Wednesday that it has launched its first overseas drone delivery service, a landmark move to leverage advanced and green Chinese digital technologies in the low-altitude economy worldwide.

Meituan said its drone delivery service subsidiary Keeta Drone had obtained a commercial license for Beyond Visual Line of Sight drone deliveries from Dubai's civil aviation authority, and had started providing fast and efficient drone delivery of food, medicine, and other essential items in designated pilot areas.

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In addition to bringing its self-developed aircraft, automated airport, and intelligent scheduling system to Dubai, the company has made extensive adaptations and modifications to address the challenges posed by the local environment such as high temperature, said Mao Yinian, vice-president of Meituan and president of Keeta Drone.

The low-altitude economy, including drone deliveries and flying cars, has seen robust development in China in recent years, as many local governments have rolled out supportive policies to explore the new consumption-upgrading frontier.

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Meituan began exploring drones for seamless air-ground local deliveries in 2017 and launched its first commercial delivery service in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen in 2021.

As of December 2024, Keeta Drone operates 53 routes in major Chinese cities, having completed over 400,000 deliveries. The service offers customers a wide selection of products and spans a variety of locations, ranging from offices, residential areas, and libraries to tourist spots such as the Great Wall.

The size of China's low-altitude economy as of the end of 2023 was estimated at more than 500 billion yuan (about $69.53 billion), with its scale expected to rise to 2 trillion yuan by 2030, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

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"We hope to explore more possibilities in the low-altitude economy by bringing technologies to overseas markets, enabling mutually beneficial win-win outcomes between China's technologies and more countries and regions," Mao said.