Robot on the line

National push

The postal industry's 15th Five-Year Plan calls for China to "actively develop smart postal services" and significantly increase digitalization across the delivery process. It also calls for wider use of artificial intelligence in customer service, operations, transport, collection and delivery, safety, management and warehousing, as well as upgrades to sorting, loading, transport and other equipment.

Hu Kai, spokesman for the State Post Bureau of China and director-general of its department of policies and regulations, said the sector would promote the "broad and deep integration" of AI with postal and express delivery services, accelerating applications ranging from intelligent transport and warehousing to operations and last-mile delivery.

Chen Kai, deputy head of the State Post Bureau, also said the sector will seek to extract greater value from industry data, strengthen the use of AI and develop low-altitude delivery logistics.

The push comes as the industry itself enters a different stage of development.

During the previous five-year period, China's express delivery volume rose from more than 80 billion parcels a year to nearly 200 billion, while postal industry revenue increased from 1.1 trillion yuan to 1.8 trillion yuan, according to the bureau.

The new planning period places greater emphasis on quality and efficiency rather than expansion alone.

That makes technologies such as AI, robotics and autonomous transport important not simply because they are novel, but because relatively small efficiency gains can be multiplied across an enormous network.