From October 1 to 5 local time, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) held its 4th Extraordinary Congress in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, examining proposals associated with the further opening up of UPU to wider postal sector players, climate action within the postal sector, and the evolution of postal financial services. The congress attracted delegations from over 120 member countries.

The Chinese delegation consists of delegates from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Post Bureau, China Post Group Corporation Limited, Hongkong Post and Macao Post and Telecommunications Bureau (CTT). The congress honored the winners of the Integrated Index for Postal Development (2IPD), in which China won the 2022 Regional Champion in Asia-Pacific. Guo Chenglin, chief accountant of China Post Group, accepted the award on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.

The Integrated Index for Postal Development is a composite index providing an overview of postal development around the world based on postal big data, official UPU statistics and key UPU surveys. It offers a benchmark performance score (from 0 to 100) along four dimensions of postal development: postal reliability, reach, relevance and resilience, also referred to as the “four Rs” of postal development. Among them, “reliability” assesses the development of quality of service from a speed and predictability perspective. “Reach” evaluates the level of postal connectivity of the country with the rest of the world from an outbound perspective. “Relevance” measures the level of competitiveness in all main markets. “Resilience” estimates the postal capacity to overcome economic, social, technology and environmental shocks in a sustainable way.

The PDL classification breaks down UPU member countries into 10 different categories of postal development from level 1 to 10 according to their respective 2IPD scores, of which 10 represents the highest level. In 2023, awards were given to countries who attained the highest level of development within their region (China, Brazil, Estonia, Ethiopia and Morocco), those who achieved the highest level of postal development (Austria, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland), and those who saw the greatest year-on-year improvement in postal development (Oman, Slovenia and Uzbekistan).