The year 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up policy launched by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Looking back, one cannot but marvel at the extraordinary changes in the lives of the people involved in China’s express and package delivery industry in the past four decades. Actually, China’s express industry started its journey in the 1980s, right at the beginning of reform and opening with the initiation of express service by the China Post.
But the most important thing is that China’s privately run express delivery enterprises have been contributing to poverty reduction, generating greater job opportunities in both rural and urban China.
Premier Li Keqiang termed the express delivery industry as the “new” economy. The phenomenal growth of the express delivery industry has stimulated the Chinese Government to enhance infrastructure initiatives such as airports, roads and railways.
Today China’s express delivery has become part and parcel to more than 1.3 billion Chinese people, thanks to the rapid rise of e-commerce and mobile payments. China’s express delivery volume has topped the world for three consecutive years, contributing 40 percent to the global market share. Express delivery services in China cover 87 percent of the vast rural areas of the country, enabling nearly 600 million farmers to enjoy online shopping. It is worth noting that China’s express delivery volume first hit the 10-billion mark in 2014, surpassing the U.S. to rank as No. 1.
A Xinhua report said that in the first eight months of 2018, China saw faster growth in express delivery with the country delivering 30.26 billion parcels as of August, a year-on-year growth of 27.2 percent, nearly reaching the total volume of 2016. According to one statistic, the number of Chinese express packages is expected to reach 49 billion for the whole 2018. Surely the data reflects that China is now leading the global express delivery market and thwarting the global monopoly of the United States’ United Parcel Service and FedEx and Germany’s DHL.
Needless to say, the remarkable development of China’s economy and changes in the lifestyles of the Chinese people are a major force behind the surging volume of package delivery in the world’s biggest consumer market. In addition, there should be mention of a profession when the express industry or the supply chain comes to the point of discussion. And that is the devoted Chinese courier workers who have become an integral part of the country’s express delivery and the retail market.
In recent years, the number of people who are working on it is increasing rapidly with the rise of Chinese firms such SF Express, STO Express, Shentong Express, YTO Express, ZTO Express and Yunda Express, to name a few. The number of courier workers in China is believed to have reached 3 million.
Every day these hard-working couriers deliver 100 million packages to buyers or clients in China. Jack Ma, chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said that as many as 1 billion packages will be delivered every day in China in five to eight years in a speech at the 2017 Global Smart Logistics Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
During the past 40 years, a series of measures have been put forward to set China’s door wide open for the overseas companies which have also profited from its market opening. It should be noted that following China’s WTO commitments made in 2001, the amended Postal Law issued in China in 2009 includes the basic rules for the express industry and provides legal guarantees for a unified, open and orderly express market. An array of international companies had already entered the Chinese market before the year 2000. Leading foreign express delivery firms — FedEx, UPS and DHL — are now active in all major cities in China and profit themselves from China’s favorable taxation policies.
While contributing to China’s wider opening up, Chinese delivery enterprises have also extended their social responsibility in poverty alleviation, one of China’s “three tough battles” for the next two years, by virtue of their advancements in the technology of package sorting and transport.
China’s e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com and many courier companies have been helping with the sale of farm produce from poor villages through online shopping platforms. Notably, many delivery enterprises actively participate in the “10,000 Enterprises Aid 10,000 Villages” campaign. They also offer courier jobs for poor rural youth in order to lift them out of poverty, which deserves much praise.
There is a lot the rest of the world can learn from China’s booming express delivery industry in terms of its role in economic growth and poverty reduction.
(The author is the secretary of New Horizon Radio Listeners’ Club, a China-watcher club based in West Bengal, India.)