Across China: Unmanned vans, drones and love -- smart machines accelerate Chinese New Year deliveries

BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- In recent years, the Spring Festival travel period has often seen Chinese New Year goods arrive home faster than the people who sent them.

Thanks to the increasingly widespread application of intelligent and efficient logistics equipment, items bearing good wishes for the Chinese New Year can now reach households more conveniently and swiftly than ever before.

As dawn broke one recent morning in Renqiu City of north China's Hebei Province, the ZTO Express delivery hub was already abuzz. Workers loaded parcels -- mostly Spring Festival gifts -- into driverless vehicles, and these autonomous vans then departed for local collection points, kicking off another day of the peak seasonal delivery rush.

"Once the 'New Year goods festival' begins, the pace changes noticeably," said unmanned vehicle operator Liu Jiamu, monitoring the vehicles through screens.

As the Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 17 this year, approaches, surging online sales have created a logistics mountain. Facing a boom in orders and a seasonal labor squeeze, China's courier industry is deploying a new frontline force: an alliance of smart machines and human workers.

From autonomous ground vehicles and delivery drones to AI-powered forecasting systems, people are teaming up with technology to ensure gifts and groceries arrive promptly.

COST-SAVING, HIGH EFFICIENCY

In Beijing's Yanqing District, drones are being used to ferry newspapers and packages from the Zhangshanying Town post office to the remote Yanqing Winter Olympic Village, guaranteeing timely service.

This 7-kilometer "air mail" route is a first for the Beijing Postal Service. While the straight-line distance is short, ground transport requires a treacherous 15-kilometer mountain detour. Winter snow and ice make road travel unreliable, creating a perennial delivery bottleneck.

Upon command, drone propellers hum to life and the special aerial courier ascends to traverse the valley. It lands in the Olympic Village square just 14 minutes later -- 60 percent faster than the 35-minute ground trip -- providing a resilient lifeline for holiday parcels traveling across complex terrain.

At a J&T Express hub in Luoyang of central China's Henan Province, autonomous vehicles have also rewritten the festival work routine for site manager Li Shaopeng as staff numbers thin during the holiday.

"A single unmanned vehicle can carry about 600 parcels daily, allowing our human couriers an extra half hour of rest during this hectic season," Li said.

Song Yulong, J&T's autonomous vehicle project lead, noted that over 1,000 such vehicles have been deployed nationwide during this period, boosting delivery efficiency by approximately 20 percent.

Li Feng, manager of a ZTO Express hub in Nanchang of east China's Jiangxi Province, has noticed that parcels are changing as deliveries of fresh food and gift boxes become more common, demanding more careful handling. Coupled with the seasonal exodus of workers returning home, the strain is intense.

Automation is demonstrating its value. "We aim to replace over 80 percent of short-haul shuttle staff with machines, allowing most employees to enjoy the holiday," said Zhang Zongjun, head of the Renqiu ZTO Express hub.

During the peak period, his site has handled up to 8,000 outbound parcels daily. Twelve autonomous vehicles now operate regular shuttle routes between the hub and local stations, freeing staff for more complex tasks.

Unmanned vehicles slash the cost per parcel on a shuttle leg from 0.25 yuan (about 3.6 U.S. cents) to about 0.1 yuan, Zhang said. And efficiency is soaring. "A courier might manage two round trips a day, but these vehicles can do about six, saving roughly two hours across the final delivery chain."

ZTO Express data shows that by January, the company operated over 3,500 unmanned vehicles across some 268 cities, moving more than 8.7 million parcels daily.

GOODS MOVE AHEAD OF ORDERS

Anticipating regional demand spikes, JD Logistics this year introduced an AI new year goods map. The system analyzes consumption data to predict top-selling items and regions, enabling the smart pre-positioning of stocks in warehouses closer to forecasted demand -- moving goods before orders are even placed.

Chen Xiaofeng, who manages an appliance store on JD.com, relies on this system for sales of products like blenders and coffee makers.

"Sales are concentrated, and items are bulky. Poor stock allocation leads to delays or stockouts," he said.

Using the AI map's intuitive data on sales trends and delivery forecasts, his store has reduced its proportion of cross-regional shipments from 27 percent to just 3 percent. Next-day delivery rates have improved by 22 percent, with 85 percent of orders now arriving on the same day they are ordered, or on the following day.

JD Logistics has opened this tool to all merchants, integrating it with its "hyper-brain" AI model and warehouse robots for a synchronized boost.

Wang Biqiong, a 68-year-old native of Chengdu in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was on Monday happily surprised by a meat package delivery that her son in Shanghai, whose work schedule means he will miss the family reunion on the eve of the Spring Festival, had ordered as a gift on JD.com.

"The gift is precious, but all I want for the festival is to have him around with us," she told Xinhua. ■