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%, nearly reaching the total volume of 2016, a Xinhua report said.
At a forum in Shanghai last week, Ma Junsheng, head of China's State Post Bureau, was quoted as saying that "the express delivery business in China is on a fast track, (and) "it is seeking new
opportunities to expand and diversify its services.”
He said that China's delivery industry will strengthen efforts to work with agricultural products suppliers to ensure fresh delivery from farm to table, innovate its supply chain with the latest
technology and provide timely service for cross-border online shopping.
Green pays off
Ma added that "China's express delivery business is also taking into consideration green development. We are adopting new measures, such as using environmentally friendly packaging, encouraging
recycling of parcel disposals and introducing fuel-efficient transport vehicles."
Statistics indicate that the total number of express deliveries in China surpassed 40 billion in 2017, topping the world's market for four consecutive years with a share of over 45%.
In a related development, Lila Snyder, president of commerce services at Pitney Bowes has pointed out that China's impact on global parcel volumes, makes the numbers slightly less than
straightforward. Case in point, including China, global average parcel volume growth was 16.9%. Without China, average growth was at 6%.
Revenue growth is less affected by China, as the U.S. dominates that indicator, but with revenue comes the highest shipping costs, according to Pitney Bowes analysis of rates from UPS, Fedex and
USPS - a fact that has received some industry pushback of late not in the least because rates are at the centre of an ongoing battle between President Donald Trump and U.S. e-commerce
giants.
Cross-border e-commerce is thriving
In another development, Xinhua reported that China's cross-border e-commerce is forecast to see turnover top 9 trillion yuan (US$1.3 trillion) in 2018, according to a report released by the China
E-Commerce Association.
The report said that the top 10 import sources of China's cross-border e-commerce trade in 2017 were Japan, the U.S., South Korea, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France,
Britain, and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Cross-border e-commerce is most active in south China's Guangdong Province, followed by Beijing, east China's Zhejiang and Shandong provinces and central China's Henan Province for exports via
e-commerce.
Nol van Fenema
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