Workers sort express parcels in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu Province on October 22, 2024. China's "Double 11" shopping festival is off to an early start this year, with major domestic e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Tmall under Alibaba and JD.com launching promotions early. Photo: VCG

China's express deliveries totaled 174.5 billion parcels in 2024, up 21 percent over a year earlier. The sector's business revenues reached 1.4 trillion yuan ($191.1 billion), representing a year-on-year rise of 13 percent, the State Post Bureau (SPB) said on Wednesday during an annual work conference. 

The country's postal industry supported broader integration with livestreaming e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce, and other new internet-based business forms, which assisted online retail sales of goods worth more than 13 trillion yuan, the bureau said.

"The strengthening express delivery activity is closely linked with China's economic activity. The rapid growth in logistics reflects the rapid development of China's consumption and e-commerce," Zhang Yi, CEO of the iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Zhang noted that the stable growth in the postal and courier delivery sector resulted from the great improvement of the country's transport infrastructure, the government's supportive policies, as well as non-stop technology innovation.

The SPB said that in 2024, China moved to ramp up the infrastructure network in the vast swath of the country's central and western regions, with the volume of express deliveries in the central part of the country rising 30 percent year-on-year, and the deliveries in the western region jumping 35 percent.

Last year, the SPB set up nearly 3,000 overseas distribution centers and over 300 overseas warehouses. It also opened 16 transport routes for the China-Europe Railway Express and 25 ocean shipping lines. 

During the conference, the bureau said that large language AI models have helped accelerate business integration in the sector, with the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System being fully applied. In 2024, the industry, for the first time, operated up to 1,000 unmanned vehicles and over 300 unmanned drones, which sent more than 3 million parcels. 

The SPB said that the industry will likely maintain a steady upward trend in 2025, with the volume of express deliveries expected to reach 190 billion pieces and business revenues hitting1.5 trillion yuan.

The bureau vowed to back up the development of intelligent cloud-based warehouses, as well as drone-assisted low-altitude deliveries. And, it will continuously strengthen the construction of the international delivery network, and support China's express delivery firms to expand in overseas market.

Global Times