China's logistics development trends in the post COVID-19 era

Abstract

The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought great challenges to the development of the world economy and has an unprecedented and inevitable impact on the logistics industry connecting various economic activities. In the context of the gradual alleviation of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, we observed five impacts on China's logistics industry, which are sharp drop in logistics demand, shortage of transportation capacity, disruption of logistics network, change of service mode, and increase in operating costs and number of lossmaking enterprises. When this invited paper was written, the outbreak in China has been effectively under controlled. In the post-COVID-19 era, under the three driving forces (i.e. the market, technology and policy), China's logistics industry will develop rapidly, leading to significant changes in five aspects: logistics demand, logistics supply, logistics infrastructure, logistics informatisation, and logistics industry development. The authors of this invited paper have been actively involved in the development of China's logistics industry in various capacities, governmental and non-governmental as well as in academia, and participated in a range of studies on the development trends, plans and policies of China's logistics industry. The authors have a profound understanding of the latest situation in the China's logistics industry and government initiatives.

Impact of COVID-19 on transportation and logistics: a case of China

“…Earlier it had increased by 92% in February (Xu et al, 2020), which was obviously a success factor for the logistics and transportation sector of China, and also benefited multiple other industries. This was primarily because certain government policies had been put into place, and were implementing the requirements of quarantine for trucks and other essential goods based on the study conducted by Liu et al (2020). Therefore, keeping these intricacies and situations in mind, this study aims to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the logistics and transport sector of China.…”

Impact of COVID-19 on IoT Adoption in Healthcare, Smart Homes, Smart Buildings, Smart Cities, Transportation and Industrial IoT

“…China is the world’s largest logistics market and it has also responded well to COVID shock. Cainiao Logistics has built China Smart Logistic Network based on IoT and AI to achieve fast express delivery services [ 164 ]. China’s smart logistics developments in wake of COVID-19 have been detailed in [ 165 ].…”

Understanding customers' adoption of express delivery service for last-mile delivery in the UK

“…The five-year longitudinal survey not only allowed us to obtain more reliable results globally, but could also allow future studies to observe year-to-year trends. In particular, fast-changing data and interesting results could be expected from different countries in COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 phases, to reposition focuses on delivery criteria that influence the customer's intention (Liu et al 2020).…”