China’s parcel delivery industry reached a new milestone in the first half of 2025, handling over 95 billion parcels, up 19% year-on-year, as the sector continues to play a growing role in boosting domestic demand and supporting the real economy, the State Post Bureau (SPB) said. The country’s delivery network processed more than 520 million parcels per day on average, surpassing the 50-billion mark 18 days earlier than last year. The robust growth reflects China’s steady economic momentum and the accelerating rollout of policies supporting consumption and domestic demand, officials said. “The express delivery sector is becoming a stronger engine for stimulating consumption, energizing the real economy and serving rural and western regions,” said Zhu Li, Deputy Director of the Industrial Economy Department at the SPB’s Development and Research Center. “It has laid a solid foundation for achieving the industry’s annual growth goals.”
The expanding reach of the delivery network has brought remarkable changes to everyday life across the country – from the highlands of Xinjiang to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. In Yarkant county of Xinjiang, a young Uygur woman easily retrieved a parcel from a local pickup station. Inside were school supplies for her younger brother and pastries for her grandmother. “We used to travel all the way to the city for this,” she said. “Now it’s just at our doorstep.” In the southern city of Maoming in Guangdong province, known as the “hometown of lychees”, freshly picked fruits are packed and shipped through priority cold-chain logistics by air and high-speed rail. Customers in Beijing or Shanghai who place orders today can eat the lychees tomorrow.
To keep up with soaring demand and cut delivery times, courier companies have stepped up investment in infrastructure and smart logistics, including expanding airfreight fleets, adding rail-air transportation routes, automating sorting hubs, building unmanned vertical warehouses, and deploying drones and driverless delivery vehicles, said Zhu, from the State Post Bureau’s Development and Research Center. With a new drone base in Rui’an, Zhejiang province, highly perishable bayberries go from the tree to tables in Wenzhou, a neighboring city in a few hours or to customers across the country the next day.
Behind the scenes, technology is driving transformation. From artificial intelligence-powered sorting to intelligent dispatch systems, automation is improving efficiency and enhancing the customer experience. “Unmanned stations, autonomous vehicles and wider application of AI are not only optimizing operations, but also improving service quality and expanding what postal services can offer,” said Zhu from the State Post Bureau’s Development and Research Center, as reported by the China Daily.
