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 loss-making 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Logistics industry
• COVID-19
• driving forces
• reformed trends

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The total value of social logistics refers to the total value of goods that enter the market for the first time and flow from the supply side to the demand end. It is one of the statistics released jointly by the National Development and Reform Commission and the CFLP on a regular basis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chongqing Science and Technology Commission [grant number cstc2019jscx-msxmX0189]; Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 18ZDA060].