On September 26, at the container terminal of Zhangjiagang Port Area in Suzhou Port, Jiangsu Province, cargo ships were berthed and loading and unloading containers in an orderly manner. On September 30, in Yongning County, Yinchuan City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, several transport vehicles carrying large wind power blades were on their way. On August 27, a delivery person from the Jiangxi Yifeng County Branch of China Post Group delivered packages to villagers in Tangling Village. On September 16, the Pinglu Canal, a backbone project of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, was officially opened to navigation, adding the shortest, most economical, and most convenient sea access route for the southwestern region.
From the layout of national logistics hubs to the full coverage of rural delivery networks; from multimodal transport corridors connecting land and sea to strengthening the networked service capacity of logistics... As the "arteries" of the real economy, China's logistics network is accelerating its construction and becoming increasingly smooth. The layout of major logistics infrastructure is continuously improving, regional distribution networks are being optimized, economies of scale are being unleashed, and the pace of digital, intelligent, and green transformation is accelerating, injecting a steady stream of momentum into high-quality economic and social development.
Rapid Advancement: Logistics Network Construction Achieves Remarkable Results
In Wuhan, Hubei Province, the Jinkong Changmao International Cold Chain Logistics Park is bustling with activity. Trucks loaded with refrigerated containers shuttle back and forth, delivering sealed packaged fresh products into cold storage. "This batch of fresh products from South America took less than 40 days from shipment to receipt, saving considerable time in transit compared to before," said Peng Haifeng, Executive General Manager of Huapei Commercial Logistics Group. The rapid turnover of goods would not be possible without the support of multimodal transport and the supply chain finance service platform. "The platform integrates data from customs, ports, shipping, road transport, and other parties. Before the fresh products even boarded the ship, I had already coordinated with different freight companies in advance and developed the optimal transshipment plan," Peng said.
The logistics network is organically composed of hub nodes, backbone corridors, equipment and vehicles, rules and standards, and information data. It is a composite infrastructure system and comprehensive service network that supports the efficient flow of goods and resources across society. Among the "six networks," the logistics network is the supporting infrastructure system that promotes the efficient circulation of goods and resources. By the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the completion rate of China's "6 axes, 7 corridors, 8 channels" national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network backbone exceeded 90%, and the proportion of naturally formed villages (groups) with larger populations connected by hardened roads reached 95%, strongly supporting the reduction of logistics costs and improvement of efficiency.
"The purpose of systematically building the logistics network is to optimize the allocation of logistics resources across society, accelerate the formation of network economies of scale, and further reduce the overall cost of logistics operations," said Li Chao, spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission. China's logistics network construction has already achieved remarkable results.
In terms of infrastructure, China is accelerating the construction of the "four horizontal and five vertical" domestic logistics corridors. A total of 181 national logistics hubs and 105 national backbone cold chain logistics bases are accelerating their interconnection into a network. There are more than 2,700 logistics parks above designated size, and the layout of hub nodes has basically taken shape.
In terms of systems and technology, the construction of rules and standards is being accelerated. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, 210 national standards for logistics in various categories were issued. The opening and sharing of public logistics data is accelerating, and the level of information and data connectivity has been further improved. At the same time, the level of equipment and vehicles has steadily improved. In the first quarter of this year, sales of new energy heavy trucks increased by 45% year-on-year, and unmanned logistics equipment is developing rapidly. All of these have effectively reduced logistics costs, improved logistics efficiency, effectively unclogged the "arteries" of the real economy, and accelerated the circulation of "blood and qi."
Following the direction of leveraging comprehensive value, the path of logistics network construction reflects distinct systemic characteristics. Lu Chengyun, a researcher at the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, analyzed in an interview that the construction of the logistics network emphasizes both integrity and effectiveness. "The construction of the logistics network emphasizes coordinating 'major arteries' and 'microcirculation,' 'hard construction' and 'soft connectivity,' 'internal circulation' and 'external connectivity.' It builds an integrated network of 'trunk and branch' lines, promotes the organic connection of domestic and international networks, and removes bottlenecks and blockages in operation to improve the overall efficiency of the entire network," Lu said. At the same time, according to the definition of the logistics network as a "comprehensive service network," its construction focuses on improving the quality and efficiency of network services, highlighting precision and adaptability, and strengthening close coordination between the logistics network and industries.
Technological Innovation: Digital and Intelligent Upgrading Accelerates
The digital and intelligent upgrading of the logistics network is accelerating. "Digital intelligence and green development are the inherent qualities endowed by the times to the logistics network. Its construction emphasizes technological empowerment and system integration. While consolidating traditional logistics hubs, corridors, and other foundations, it highlights the digital, intelligent, and green development of logistics facilities and equipment, promoting innovation throughout the entire process of logistics network construction," Lu said.
China's transportation technology and equipment are becoming more advanced. The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link set multiple world records, and major engineering technological achievements such as the Pinglu Canal and the Xiaoyangshan North Operation Area container terminal are emerging. The shipping industry has taken solid steps in digital and intelligent development. A total of 60 automated terminals have been built and put into operation nationwide. The fastest single-machine operation efficiency of automated terminals at Shanghai Port and Qingdao Port exceeds 60 natural containers per hour, reaching the current world's highest level of port loading and unloading efficiency. The construction of smart logistics parks and intelligent warehousing facilities is accelerating, and more than 7,800 kilometers of expressways have completed digital and intelligent upgrading. Technologies such as drones, vehicles, and warehouses are being applied at an accelerated pace, significantly improving operational efficiency and precise scheduling capabilities.
In Zizhong, Sichuan Province, JD Logistics has opened 131 drone delivery routes. Relying on a three-tier delivery architecture of "county-level vehicle transfer + township-level drone delivery + village-level pickup point placement," it uses low-altitude logistics to help hilly and mountainous areas solve the difficulty of inconvenient express delivery and pickup. According to a relevant person in charge of JD Logistics, here, after express packages are transported to the distribution station in the township, staff sort them and mount them on drones, which then depart along preset routes. In just 10 minutes, they can be delivered to village-level pickup points. A single drone flies 25 to 30 trips per day, covering all villages within seven to eight hours, with a maximum daily delivery of over 300 packages. In the future, JD Logistics will also open drone routes to villages in Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, and other places to serve vast hilly and mountainous areas.
Unmanned delivery vehicles shuttle through streets and alleys, delivering packages precisely to residential communities. In Jingmen, Hubei Province, New Stone unmanned vehicles were recently put into operation at a local wholesale market. Unlike the previous busy scene of manually driven tricycles and small trucks shuttling for delivery, a batch of New Stone unmanned delivery vehicles are parked in front of merchants' doors. Staff load sorted fruits and vegetables, fresh ingredients, and daily necessities into sealed cargo boxes in an orderly manner. After setting the delivery route with one click, the vehicles start autonomously and smoothly head to various destinations. In the view of Yu Enyuan, founder and CEO of New Stone unmanned vehicles, the large-scale application of unmanned vehicles has promoted the upgrading of capacity supply from dispersed human labor to standardized intelligent capacity, while also enhancing the certainty and risk resistance of link operations. "Unmanned vehicles can operate normally around the clock. During peak periods such as e-commerce promotions, capacity supply can be rapidly increased by increasing operating shifts, becoming a supplement for livelihood security and emergency delivery," Yu said. In normalized operations in nearly 100 cities across the country, New Stone unmanned vehicles are promoting the transformation of terminal operations toward refinement and digitization through capacity supplementation, efficiency upgrading, and model optimization.
After intelligent robot systems are introduced, the warehouse, as a microcirculation node of the logistics network, has also changed its operating model. The traditional warehouse operation model is typically "people finding goods," and warehousing nodes often easily become "congestion bottlenecks" in the logistics network. Geek+, an intelligent logistics robot company, has achieved "goods-to-person" through AI intelligent algorithms and autonomous mobile robots (AMR): robots transport entire shelves to workstations, and operators complete picking in place without walking around to search. Relying on its self-developed embodied intelligence 4D brain, Geek+ further complements autonomous identification and goods grasping capabilities through embodied products such as the humanoid robot Gino 1, promoting warehouse automation toward full-process unmanned operations. Tan Wenzhe, head of Geek+'s system platform, introduced that in large logistics hubs, facing complex scenarios of tens of thousands of square meters of warehouses and thousands of robots operating simultaneously, the robot scheduling system is the "brain" that makes decisions. Geek+'s self-developed robot management system has the capability of "scheduling over 5,000 AMRs in a single warehouse." Through AI algorithms, it achieves optimal path planning, intelligent obstacle avoidance, and other functions, intelligently predicting the time each robot arrives at the target workstation and automatically adjusting the number of robots assigned to each workstation accordingly. "Compared with traditional assembly lines, this dynamic scheduling model has obvious advantages in responding to order peaks. Our system can significantly improve the overall utilization of the robot cluster through algorithm optimization without additional hardware investment," Tan said.
The high-quality development of modern logistics requires the two-way empowerment of "hard construction" and "soft connectivity." According to a relevant person in charge of JD Logistics, JD Logistics's intelligence is not simply stacking equipment but walking on two legs. "Robots are the 'limbs,' and the super brain is the 'brain.' Only through software-hardware collaboration can intelligence be transformed into efficiency and cost advantages," the person said. JD Logistics's self-developed Super Brain Large Model 3.0 is composed of five native industrial large models for the supply chain, building a trinity system of decision AI, process AI, and physical AI. Its decision AI integrates multi-dimensional information such as orders, warehouse networks, road conditions, and weather, and can update decision plans for hundreds of millions of packages in seconds.
Promoting Development: Transitioning from "Point Layout and Line Clearing" to "Chain Formation and Network Integration"
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Logistics Network Construction" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Plan"), proposing goals such as "by 2030, logistics network construction will achieve noticeable results" and "promoting the ratio of total social logistics costs to gross domestic product (GDP) to drop to 13.1%, a decrease of 0.8 percentage points from the end of the '14th Five-Year Plan' period." Li Chao stated that China's consumer demand is becoming increasingly diverse, industrial upgrading is accelerating, and the external environment is complex and volatile, placing higher demands on the efficiency, cost, and resilience of the logistics network. It is necessary to further optimize incremental capacity and improve existing capacity through technological empowerment and system integration. To this end, the "Implementation Plan" adheres to a problem-oriented and goal-oriented approach, promoting the transformation and upgrading of logistics infrastructure from "point layout and line clearing" to "chain formation and network integration."
"The落脚点 of the 'Implementation Plan' is the construction of specific tasks of the logistics network, with the purpose of supporting the real economy in improving operational quality and efficiency and smoothing the circulation of the national economy. Therefore, the logistics network construction has a high degree of integration in its task system and comprehensive value in its implementation effects," Lu analyzed. The logistics network is not only an important carrier for expanding effective investment but also an important support for building a modern industrial system and a solid foundation for building a unified national market.
How will the "Implementation Plan" be implemented? Lu suggested that, on the one hand, given the characteristics of logistics network construction involving cross-departmental, cross-domain, and cross-regional work, as well as the need to promote coordinated development of the logistics network with water networks, new power grids, new generation communication networks, and others, it is necessary to strengthen comprehensive planning and coordination, dynamically optimize and adjust policies and measures, and form policy synergy. On the other hand, it is necessary to mobilize the enthusiasm of all parties to participate in logistics network construction, especially requiring all regions to coordinate project construction and operation, take the lead in promoting logistics networking between and within major strategic regions and in key urban agglomerations, strengthen deep integration of logistics network construction with comprehensive three-dimensional transportation facility construction, regional industrial layout, and urban-rural integrated development, strive to create an environment for regional coordination and industrial integration development, strengthen scenario-driven approaches, and promote the implementation of logistics network construction.
"Building the logistics network and forming a logistics network service with broader accessibility, higher efficiency, and lower cost will not only create a convenient environment and expand profit margins for industrial and trade enterprises in organizing raw materials and finished products, but also provide urban and rural residents with more stable and powerful storage and transportation guarantees for daily necessities, continuously reduce the circulation costs of consumer goods, expand the supply of high-quality services, and better meet the people's aspirations for a better life," Lu said.