Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province has released plans to ban unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, from going close to civil airports, to safeguard the safe operation of civilian flights.
Drones, unmanned balloons and birds that may affect flight safety will not be allowed to enter "clearance protection areas" around airports to ensure the safety of flights arriving and leaving the city's airports, according to a draft regulation released on the website of the Guangzhou government's legal affairs office on Monday.
The regulation does not explain how large these "clearance protection areas" around airports will be.
The local government will solicit public opinions on the regulation until December 8, and the public can submit their thoughts to the government's website and Sina Weibo account.
Similar regulations ban drones from entering designated areas around airports are also issued in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province and Linyi, East China's Shandong Province.
The use of drones in China has been on the rise in recent years, but national regulations on the drone industry and on drone flights in the country's restricted low-altitude airspace have yet to be announced.
A Xinjiang-based company was fined 20,000 yuan ($3,134) after its drone conducted a geological survey without permission in May, the Nanfang Daily reported in October 2015.
There are more than 20,000 drones in China, but most of them are operated illegally, news outlet cnr.cn reported.
At a forum on the sidelines of an exposition held in Beijing in September 2015, several Chinese and foreign experts called for the urgent implementation of specific regulations on the drone industry to avoid social problems caused by unlicensed flights, including terror attacks.
France, as well as the U.S., Japan and Singapore have issued regulations or laws on the use of drones, the Singapore-based Straits Times reported in May 2015.
