China expands parcel delivery to remote villages using postal network

China is leveraging its nationwide postal network to bring parcel delivery services to nearly 3,000 remote villages where commercial couriers have struggled with high costs and low delivery volumes, the State Post Bureau of China announced on Monday.

By the end of August, the pilot program had extended parcel delivery to 2,939 villages in 17 counties across central and western China, covering most of the 3,960 villages included in the trial, according to Lin Hu, spokesman for the bureau and director of its market regulation department.

Launched in January, the program utilizes China Post's existing rural network to manage last-mile deliveries in sparsely populated areas, where long distances and relatively few parcels can make regular courier services costly. "The marginal cost of delivering a parcel in these areas is more than 10 times that in cities," Lin noted.

China Post has allocated 210 million yuan ($31.36 million) to enhance delivery capacity under the program, including more than 21 million yuan specifically for the 17 pilot counties. The share of rural delivery routes using motor vehicles has risen from 62 percent to 97 percent, the bureau reported.

This initiative comes as online shopping and e-commerce play an increasingly significant role in rural China. Postal and express delivery networks support more than 780 billion yuan in online agricultural product sales annually, according to the bureau.

"In the past, what people needed was to be able to send letters. Today, what they need is to be able to receive parcels," Lin stated.

Officials indicated that the next challenge is to make the service financially sustainable and deepen cooperation between postal operators, courier companies, and rural transport services.