China's courier services expand overseas

Ma Junsheng, director of the State Post Bureau, said courier firms are injecting vitality into the service sector, and are contributing to economic restructuring.

According to Bai Xiaodong, an official with General Administration of Customs, customs at China's cross-border online business pilot cities have dealt with 55.42 million e-commerce related packages during the first three quarters this year, up by 68 times from last year.

Industrial insiders believe that Chinese courier services are more efficient and customer-oriented than their foreign counterparts.

Shanghai ZTO Express chair Lai Haisong said that it is common for American courier services to take a whole week to deliver a package. In China, it is nearer to three days.

Yu Weijiao said that courier companies are still trying to improve efficiency. Currently STO requires that the domestic express should be delivered within 48 hours. In the future, the company will try to shorten their delivery time of cross-border packages within 72 hours and reduce the cost of international delivery by at least one third, he said.

About 75 percent of China's international courier deliveries are carried out by foreign companies. Chen Dejun said that the proportion may drop to 7.5 percent in the following decade with the rapid expansion of Chinese companies.

Yu Yan, an official in charge of courier supervision under the State Post Bureau, noted that China's courier companies are still small, and more investment was needed to cultivate internationally competitive courier enterprises.

Express companies should also take advantage of information technology such as mobile Internet, the Internet of Things, big data, and cloud computing, in order to broaden their business scope, Yu said.