As the “national team” of the industry, China Post keeps pace with the times, vigorously promotes sci-tech innovation. It adheres to technology empowerment, and strengthens the innovative application of digital technologies, sparing no effort to cultivate and develop the new quality productive forces for China Post to secure its future competitiveness. In practical applications, China Post has nurtured future-ready workers who are able to utilize modern technologies, operate cutting-edge equipment and upgrade knowledge rapidly. It has also enriched new production factors such as postal data assets, emerging technologies and innovation models. Meanwhile, by applying new tools such as large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, and automated and unmanned equipment, China Post has developed new postal finance and new express services, providing core momentum for the development of the postal sector.

China Post in the new era presents a strong sense of technology, where online services are replacing offline operations, intelligent systems are superseding manual labor, and remote coordination is displacing on-site service and management. And the vivid embodiments such as smart post offices, unmanned post offices, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned delivery vehicles, unmanned stations and intelligent warehouses are continually reshaping people’s existing perceptions of traditional postal services.

Shenzhen Postal Branch has been constantly improving customer experience of postal services and fostering new postal service models and fresh momentum with new quality productive forces, through initiatives ranging from self-service post offices to AI-powered automated management of credit standing information, from automated outbound calls via intelligent voices to self-service automated preparation and sending of verification notes and intelligent sorting of parcels. So far, Shenzhen Postal Branch has established six smart post offices and 35 self-service post offices covering all administrative districts of the city. These facilities enable customers to complete packing, place orders, send items and even handle money transfer all by themselves. By substituting technological means for pure manual labor, Shenzhen Postal Branch has made universal postal service all the more convenient, accessible, digital and intelligent, thus achieving a quantum leap in the quality and efficiency of service supply.

Anhui Postal Branch has created various unmanned application scenarios including UAV postal routes, unmanned vehicle delivery, unmanned self-service postal stations, and intelligent sorting robots and unmanned tractors in mail centers, to construct an innovation ecosystem of the industry. Meanwhile, Anhui Postal Branch has promoted the construction of digital mail centers. With digital technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things and AI empowering the production and management of the mail centers, it has helped them boost the digitization of core elements, standardization of processes and visualization of operations, and truly enabled a closed-loop digital workflow featuring real-time perception, timely correction, intelligent scheduling and scientific decision-making. The innovation factors of new quality productive forces have now become the largest increment for the high-quality development of Anhui Postal Branch.

The Command and Dispatch Center of China Post serves as the nerve center for the production and operations of the postal network nationwide. In April 2024, the center launched a new-generation digital control platform, which has enabled the postal network to operate under a smarter “brain” and therefore become another concrete example of how new quality productive forces take root in the postal sector. The platform can forecast the mail volume of any certain mail center over a period of time in the future, and ‌automatically give early warnings to the mail centers at risk of capacity overload, so that the command and dispatch personnel can ‌intervene proactively‌ before a backlog of parcels occurs, then make adequate preparations, or even ‌prevent the potential backlog entirely‌. In this way, it has effectively guaranteed the smooth operation of command and dispatch during the peak season of the Double 11 shopping spree.

The ULE livestreaming industry base of China Post launched its digital livestreamer “Xiao You”. Since its pilot livestreaming in January 2024, the digital avatar “Xiao You” has delivered cumulatively ‌4,789 hours‌ of livestreaming content, attracting ‌28,900 unique visitors‌ and generating ‌31,600 orders‌, with the total transaction volume reaching 24.385 million‌ yuan (about 3.403 million dollars). “‌Xiao You” has enabled ‌livestreaming 24 hours a day seven days a week. As an innovative tool, this digital avatar has injected new vitality into the development of new quality productive forces and emerged as a new growth engine of postal e-commerce.

Strategically positioned ‌adjacent to the largest e-commerce fulfillment hub‌ in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, the ‌East China Mail Center‌ handles ‌over 50 percent of inbound/outbound transit mail in Zhejiang. With deep fusion of new quality productive forces such as 5G, the Internet of Things, AI and digital twin technology, the construction project of the mail center has strived to build it into a new-generation digital one for express items. To this end, it has developed an integrated digital twin system for production and management, enabled overview of operational status on a single screen and intelligent early warning of anomalies, and established an integrated intelligent management system covering people, vehicles, goods and the site.

The Wanggang (East Shanghai) and Taopu (West Shanghai) operation sites of Shanghai Mail Center have deployed automatic small packet sorters with unmanned feeding equipment, with which mail items are automatically conveyed from the feeding bins to the sorting chutes, saving human involvement throughout the entire process. The successful application of unmanned feeding technology is a microcosm of the digital and intelligent transformation of Shanghai Postal Branch. By deploying a large amount of equipment with automation and intelligent technologies, Shanghai Postal Branch has increased by 35.2 percent in its mail processing capacity, 10.6 percent in per capita efficiency, 2.6 percent in equipment effectiveness, and one percent to four percent in time limit indicators.

To address the difficulties in travel and mail delivery in remote mountainous and snowy plateau areas, Sichuan Postal Branch has conducted test flights on and launched UAV mail routes in 9 cities (prefectures) across the province, enabling UAVs to help bring more farm produce in these areas to urban households nationwide, thereby turning the historically well-known “treacherous roads in Sichuan” into smooth postal routes, and opening fast air routes known as “over-the-cloud mail routes” in the UAV era to replace the original horseback routes.

From the innovation laboratory for unmanned banking to smart outlets and even to the “cloud counter” service model, the Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) Beijing Branch has constructed a new smart finance ecosystem featuring scenario synergy, man-machine coordination and cross-border integration, and achieved online and intelligent operation in the full life cycle of financial services. Based on audio, video, intelligent routing and other sophisticated technologies, the cloud counter service model has demonstrated the strong vitality of new quality productive forces. With cloud counters, Beijing Branch has established a remote “face-to-face” customer service system integrating video, voice and sharing functions. It adopts an operation mode of customers’ offline self-service operation plus remote agent assistance and handling, and develops a service network coordinating offline and remote operation, thus providing customers with a service experience of one-point access and one-stop response, and facilitating the upgrading of traditional outlets into immersive, digital, intelligent and scenario-based comprehensive financial service centers.

In 2024, China Post began to accelerate its development of digital intelligence, and stepped up efforts to foster new quality productive forces with the goal of leveraging digital intelligence to address major and specific issues. From Shennanzhong Post Office under Shenzhen Postal Branch, where one single postal employee ensures the efficient operations of the whole post office, to the outlets of PSBC Beijing Branch, where the cloud counter service makes financial services easily accessible, China Post keeps developing new quality productive forces to transform the traditional operations of the postal sector.

Today, digitalization, green transition and intelligence have become the core pillars of China Post’s new quality productive forces. These elements have not only reshaped China Post and enhanced its capacity to serve the society and economy, but also provided more support for the high-quality social and economic development.