【英语财经】快递推动中国电商经济 Delivering the Jack Ma economy

He Pengyuan, manager of a Beijing depot for courier group ZTO Express, strolls around his warehouse at 7.30am, checking packages, looking at his watch and absent mindedly introducing each of his about 30 couriers by referring to their home regions. “Hebei”, “Guizhou”, “Guizhou”, “Sichuan”, he says, going down the line.

Not one of them is from the capital. “We had two people from Beijing last year but they quit; they couldn’t handle the workload,” he says. “People from the city are too soft and spoiled.”

Mr He hails from China’s southern region of Guizhou, with the lowest per capita income in the country, and says he would not be in business without fellow migrants. “China’s rural labour force is a huge army that keeps advancing. They come to the cities and keep the cost of labour relatively low,” he says.

The irrepressibly cheerful Mr He is one of the millions of rural workers who have contributed to the transformation of the Chinese economy over the past 30 years. But that era is coming to an end as labour shortages increasingly drive up wages in top-tier cities and the supply of workers begins to dry up.

To residents of the capital, the couriers are largely invisible: an army of messengers scurrying between their scooters and buildings, delivering envelopes and goods ordered online across Beijing. “I am Santa Claus,” jokes one, “I literally say ‘your courier is here’ 300 times a day.”

Each generation of China’s migrants has provided the labour to fuel a leap in the country’s economy. Mr He’s grandparents tilled rice fields, his father worked in a factory assembling televisions for export. Now members of his generation are the foot soldiers in a new era, as China seeks to move from an investment and export-driven economy to a consumption and services model. These workers are the low-tech fuel of the high-tech internet boom, or Kuaidi as they are known in Chinese. They cater to a rising consumer class that they hope to join one day.

Making sense of logistics

Despite recent slowing growth in the economy China’s ecommerce boom has spawned thousands of courier firms, of which a handful have built a national presence. ZTO, one of the top 10, told Bloomberg in April that it delivers to almost half of China’s counties and hopes to launch an initial public offering in 2017.

Mr He estimates that 70 per cent of the parcels the company delivers are packages ordered mainly via Taobao and Tmall, two websites owned by China’s ecommerce juggernaut Alibaba. The third-largest internet company in the world by market capitalisation, Alibaba — founded by the flamboyant Jack Ma — and other ecommerce companies like JD.com have made billions from listings on Wall Street. But much of the value comes from the work of the couriers, whose cheap labour fuels these business models in China.

“Low logistics prices were not just vital for the early development of ecommerce, they were a matter of life and death,” says Zhang Yi, head of Imedia, a Guangzhou-based consultancy. “Nowadays, even though the two rely on each other, in reality, ecommerce depends on logistics more than vice versa.”

Mr Zhang makes the analogy to Foxconn factory workers who build Apple’s iPhones. “China’s logistics companies are not just cheap. They are also efficient and fast,” he says.

Andrew Ng, chief scientist at the Chinese search engine Baidu, who was lured last year from Google to run its artificial intelligence operations, says: “The efficiency of this logistics network in China is phenomenal compared to other countries. I have to explain to a non-Chinese audience what the possibilities are here. They don’t believe me.”

Ecommerce relies on these super-cheap delivery services. Delivering a package overnight in most locations costs Rmb10-13 ($1.50-$2), about a tenth of the cost in the US, thanks to the 12-hour days worked by Mr He’s couriers. The main beneficiaries are the rising middle class, which consumes the trappings of a much richer society at a fraction of the cost.

Companies such as Alibaba, which controls about 70 per cent of China’s retail ecommerce — and accounts for around 8 per cent of total retail sales in the country — rely on couriers like ZTO to handle shipping and delivery for the vast majority of their business.

Unlike ecommerce in the west, which is economically viable only for expensive items worth the delivery cost, the cheap service means that Mr He’s couriers transport everything from a single box of Kleenex to a pair of shoelaces.

The jobs come with a frightening human toll. Most couriers say they are grateful for a job in the city, but they describe long hours, months away from their families and hard labour in a city to which they will never properly belong. Legally they are vulnerable because they do not have a city hukou or registration in Beijing, which strips them of access to state medical care and school places for their children.

“I hope my son remembers who I am,” says Chen Bing, a ZTO courier who hails from neighbouring Hebei province. He says he is only able to return home to his wife and child once every three months due to the workload. Wu Zhangcai, a wiry 23-year-old, who like Mr He hails from Guizhou at the southern end of China, is more typical — he returns home only at new year.

By Chinese standards the jobs pay well — Rmb5,000 a month including bonuses — but it is back-breaking. “During peak time, work starts at 7am, and doesn’t end until midnight” says Mr He. “It’s very stressful, they have to deliver 300 to 400 [packages], and have to pick up between 100 and 200, in some neighbourhoods 700 or 800 items. The entire day they are on the move, climbing stairs, when they get back they are too exhausted to move.

“Most people can’t handle this type of work,” he adds. Only one in three people hired lasts more than two months.

For most couriers the schedule is something they chase in vain. A low hum of panic accompanies them throughout their days.

One courier in the coastal city of Qingdao became an object of national ridicule last November when he jumped from a second storey window in an effort to make up lost time, and broke his leg. A camera phone video of him being tended to by paramedics — while he continued talking on his phone to customers, explaining he would be late — went viral.

Back-breaking work

The low-status job and their country roots put them at the bottom of Beijing’s cosmopolitan status ladder.

“Oh it’s the Kuaidi, you can wait” is a phrase Mr Wu hears at least three or four times a day, he says, when people hear his accent over the telephone. “I once heard someone scold their child: ‘If you don’t behave and work hard, you’ll be a Kuaidi courier when you grow up.’” Bigger companies like ZTO have built good reputations in the industry for providing decent work conditions, but there are thousands of courier companies in China and most do not even bother to sign contracts with couriers and are only lightly regulated.

Yang Zhanlu, a courier who asked for his company name to be withheld, says of his Rmb4,000 monthly salary that 25 per cent is often deducted in fines. He has been punished for knocking too loudly, or delivering too early, and has no recourse.

The main tool of the trade — the electric tricycles used by the couriers — are often a target for vandals and thieves when left unattended. They are also illegal in some Chinese cities, though enforcement is lax. But this leaves the courier at the mercy of arbitrary, and frequently corrupt, police enforcement.

For decades, China has grown by manufacturing things more cheaply than US and European rivals and it has done so in part due to low labour costs. That labour is now being deployed to deliver services. Manicures, freshly ironed shirts and food have always been available , but now — thanks to smartphone technology — it is even more convenient to have them delivered.

In addition to courier jobs, many migrants are now employed by online car hire apps Uber and Didi Kuaidi, or food delivery from websites such as Meituan or Elema . Low-paid, hard- working migrants fuel this emerging business model for “online to offline” services, which allows smartphone users to order on-demand with an efficiency and a low cost that would not be possible in higher wage countries.

Baidu’s Mr Ng says the speed of such services is impressive. He recently ordered a car wash for a friend via his smartphone. Only 30 minutes after he ordered it, the car was clean.

Mark Natkin, of Marbridge Consulting, a Beijing firm, says a lot of people outside the country look at China’s online-to-offline model and wonder why it works so well.

“It is more executable here,” he says. “What is the cost of sending someone to another person’s home to do their nails in China, versus the cost of sending someone across Manhattan? Everything is cheap so it’s economical to provide that service here, whereas in the US it would not be.”

Running out of workers

While cheap labour is crucial — many economists now argue that the country’s seemingly infinite supply of workers will dry up, as the working-age population is projected to shrink and labour shortages appear in cities. China is at last hitting the fabled Lewis turning point — a theory developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Sir Arthur Lewis — that measures the moment when the supply of cheap rural labour to an industrialised economy runs out.

Mr He came to Beijing first in 2002, and started a branch of ZTO’s courier business in 2009.

“We did everything ourselves,” he says, “we picked up the packages from the general office, we did the packaging, we delivered, we were completely self sufficient.” He adds that they made only a dozen deliveries a day.

“Since 2009, salaries have gone up four times, but delivery prices have not risen,” he adds. In fact the prices today are lower than in 2009.

“No company dares to raise its price due to the competition, or else customers will use another company,” he says.

“We have higher volumes, so we make up the costs, but the model will not be profitable forever,” he warns.

Additional reporting by Ma Fangjing

Speedy returns Ecommerce drives market growth

China’s express delivery business got its start in the early 1990s

in the Yangtze and Pearl river delta areas — the hubs of private enterprise that

grew alongside economic reforms.

STO Express and SF Express, both launched in 1993 to challenge the

state postal monopoly. They were quickly followed by a stream of other courier

companies offering to deliver parcels more cheaply and conveniently than the

state. By 2013, according to research by Deloitte, more than 8,000 express

enterprises with more than 20 major brand names were operating in China.

The growth — in excess of an annual 50 per cent from 2010 to 2014

according to the State Post Bureau — has been fuelled by the advent of

ecommerce. In the middle of the last decade Alibaba launched Taobao, an eBay-like virtual flea market for merchants to sell,

and drive customer traffic to their stores. Then it launched Tmall, a similar

site focusing on branded, larger sellers.

The connecting tissue between sellers and buyers is provided by

around a dozen of the largest delivery services, which work independently of

Alibaba but partner with its 48 per cent-owned logistics affiliate

Cainiao.

According to statistics released in March, the number of parcels

received by express delivery in China last year reached 14bn. The sector’s

market value — though it was unclear how this was measured — hit Rmb204bn

($33bn) last year, up 42 per cent from the previous year, according to the SPB,

which licenses delivery services.

The dominance of Alibaba in the Kuaidi market is difficult to

exaggerate — the company accounts for about 70 per cent of all the deliveries by

its independent logistics partners.

Other ecommerce groups such as JD.com, own their own delivery

services along the same lines as Amazon, and claim it gives them an edge in the

business to be vertically integrated from warehouses to the “last mile”

delivery.

The largest of the independents, SF Express, has grown rapidly due

to its early dominance and its franchise

model.

A long-term partner of Alibaba, analysts say it may yet decide to

compete with Cainiao which operates next-day delivery in 41 major cities across

the country, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

贺朋元，中通快递(ZTO Express)北京某站点经理。早上7:30，贺朋元在自己的仓库里转来转去检查包裹，一边看着手表，一边心不在焉地介绍手底下30来个快递员的籍贯，“河北”、“贵州”、“贵州”、“四川”，他一路挨个说下去。

这些快递员里没一个北京人。贺朋元说：“我们去年有过两个北京人，不过都不干了，他们受不了这么大工作量。城里人太娇弱，都被宠坏了。”

贺朋元来自中国南方的贵州省，该省人均收入在全中国排倒数第一。他说如果没有许许多多进城务工的农村人，他的生意就做不下去。贺朋元说：“中国的农村劳动力是一支不断前进的大军。他们来到城市，降低了城里的劳动力成本。”

贺朋元的开心溢于言表，他是亿万农民工中的一员。过去三十年，这个群体为中国经济的转型做出了贡献。但那个时代即将走到尽头，劳动力短缺正不断推高一线城市工资，劳动力供应开始枯竭。

对首都居民而言，快递员几乎是隐形的，他们在自己的电动车与一栋栋大楼之间匆匆往返，将信件和网上订购的货物运送到全北京。一个快递员开玩笑说：“我是圣诞老人。我一天真的要说300次‘你的快递到了’。”

一代又一代进城务工者用他们的劳动推动了中国经济的腾飞。贺朋元的祖父母以耕种稻田为生，他的父亲曾在一家工厂组装电视机以供出口。在中国寻求从投资和出口驱动型经济转型成消费和服务型经济之际，他这代务工者是一个新时代不可或缺的基础力量。贺朋元这群打工者是为这股高技术互联网热潮提供动力的低技术燃料，他们的名字是“快递”。他们服务于一个发展壮大中的消费者阶层，他们希望有一天自己也能加入这一阶层。

物流的意义

尽管近期经济增长放缓，但中国的电子商务热潮催生了成千上万家快递公司，有几家公司已经将业务网络铺到了全国。中通快递是中国物流企业十强之一，今年4月该公司向彭博(Bloomberg)表示自己的快递业务覆盖了中国近一半县城，希望2017年进行首次公开发行(IPO)。

贺朋元估计中通送的包裹有70%是网购的商品，主要通过淘宝(Taobao)和天猫(Tmall)下单，这两家网站为中国电子商务巨头阿里巴巴(Alibaba)所有。阿里巴巴是以市值计全球第三大互联网企业，创建人是风格张扬的马云(Jack Ma)。阿里巴巴和京东(JD.com)等电商公司通过在华尔街上市拿到了上百亿美元。但它们的大部分价值来自于快递员，他们的廉价劳动力推动了这些商业模式在中国的发展。

总部位于广州的咨询公司艾媒咨询(iMedia)的首席执行官张毅表示：“较低的物流价格不仅对电商的初期发展至关重要，而且关乎电商的生死存亡。现在，即使这两块产业互为依托，但实际上电商对物流的依赖要大于物流对电商的依赖。”

张毅将之类比于为苹果(Apple)制造iPhone的富士康(Foxconn)工人，他说：“中国的物流公司不仅收费低廉，而且高效快捷。”



中国搜索引擎百度(Baidu)的首席科学家吴恩达(Andrew Ng)说：“与其他国家相比，中国物流网络效率惊人。我曾向外国观众解释在中国哪些事情有可能发生，可他们不相信我。”吴恩达于去年离开谷歌(Google)，来到百度负责人工智能业务的运营。

电子商务依赖于这些价格超低的快递服务。在中国大部分地区，一个一公斤以内的包裹隔夜送达费用为10元到13元(约合1.5美元到2美元)，相当于美国费用的十分之一，这要归功于贺朋元手下快递员一天12个小时的工作。中国新兴的中产阶层是主要受益群体，他们可以买到发达社会的服饰，花的是几分之一的价钱。

阿里巴巴控制了约70%的中国零售电商，占中国零售总额8%左右。阿里巴巴等中国电商企业的绝大部分业务都要靠中通这些物流公司负责运送。

在西方，只有在所售物品价值比较昂贵、能够值回快递成本时，电商在经济上才具备可行性。中国电商则不同，低廉的快递费意味着贺朋元的快递员会运送一切货物，哪怕是一包纸巾，或一副鞋带。

快递工作让许多人牺牲巨大。绝大多数快递员表示自己非常感激能在城市有份工作，但他们也表示工作时间太长，成年累月不能跟家人呆在一起，而且虽在城里辛苦打工，却永远无法真正属于这座城市。他们在法律上也缺乏保护，由于没有北京户口，他们在医疗保障和子女上学方面都受到限制。

来自北京邻近省份河北省的中通快递员陈兵说：“我希望我儿子还记得我是谁。”他说由于工作量大，自已每三个月才能回家看次妻子和孩子。精瘦结实的吴章才今年23岁，他跟贺朋元一样来自中国南方的贵州省，每年只在春节时回次家，像他这样一年回一次家是更普遍的情况。

快递每月工资加奖金有5000元人民币，在中国算还不错，但这份工作非常辛苦。贺朋元说：“赶上高峰期，我们要从早上7点开始，一直干到半夜才收工。工作非常累，他们一天要送300到400件（包裹），还得收100到200个快件，有些小区收件能达到700到800个。他们整天到处跑，一趟趟地爬楼梯，回家时都累到动弹不得。”

贺朋元又说：“大多数人都干不了这种活。”受聘者中，只有三分之一的人能坚持两个月以上。

大多数快递员永远有快件要赶着送。紧张感整天挥之不去地跟随着他们。

去年11月，海滨城市青岛的一名快递员成了全中国的笑谈。为了赶上耽误的时间，他从二楼的一扇窗户跳下，结果摔断了腿。他在医护人员看护时，还在继续跟客户打电话，解释自己可能会迟到，那段手机视频火遍了网络。

繁重的工作

快递工作社会地位不高，再加上快递员出身农村，令他们在北京这座国际化大都市处于社会地位的底层。

“哦，快递啊，你等会啊。”吴章才说，每天他用带着口音的普通话给客户打电话时，至少有三四次会听到客户说这句话。“有一次我听到一个人训自己小孩，‘你要是不听话，不好好学习，长大了就得当快递。’”中通这样的大快递公司已经在业内树立了为员工提供良好工作环境的口碑，但中国还有成千上万家小快递公司，大多数甚至懒得跟快递员签劳动合同，也几乎不受什么监管。

快递员杨展露（音译）要求匿去他工作的那家快递公司的名字，他说自己一个月4000元人民币的工资往往有25%要被扣掉，扣工资的理由包括敲门声音太大，送货太早，或压根没理由。



快递员的主要送货工具是电动三轮车，这些车子在无人看管时往往会遭人毁坏，或被小偷盯上。在中国部分城市，骑电动三轮还是违法的，不过执法没那么严格。但这就令快递员只能任凭警察专横执法，还常常遭遇腐败执法。

几十年来，中国凭借以低于欧美竞争对手的成本制造各种商品获得经济增长，这在一定程度上是靠低廉的劳动成本实现的。现在，这一廉价劳动力资源正在被用于将各种服务送到人们手上。美甲、衣物熨烫以及餐食等服务一直都有，但得益于智能手机技术，人们可以更方便地享受到这些服务。

除了做快递员以外，现在还有许多进城务工者受雇于在线打车应用优步(Uber)和滴滴快滴(Didi Kuaidi)，或给美团(Meituan)、饿了么(Elema)等网站当送餐员。低薪、勤劳的进城务工者们推动了这种“线上到线下”(O2O)服务的新兴商业模式。智能手机用户可以按照自己的需求下单，既快捷，成本又低，这在工资较高的国家是无法实现的。

吴恩达说，这些服务的速度之快令人惊叹。最近他用手机为朋友订购了一次洗车服务。下单后仅半个小时，车子就洗好了。

北京Marbridge Consulting公司的马克?纳特金(Mark Natkins)表示：国外有许多人目睹中国的线上到线下模式，想不明白为什么它能如此成功。

纳特金说：“这一模式在中国更可行。派人到别人家里上门做美甲在中国是什么价，在美国曼哈顿又是什么价？中国的一切都很便宜，所以在中国提供这些服务是划算的，但在美国就不划算。”

用工荒

虽然廉价劳动力如此重要，但现在许多经济学家认为中国看似无限的劳动力供应将要枯竭，中国的劳动年龄人口连续三年萎缩，城市出现了用工荒。中国终于就要进入传说中的刘易斯拐点(Lewis turning point)了，这一理论是由诺贝尔奖得主、经济学家阿瑟?刘易斯爵士(Sir Arthur Lewis)提出的，用来衡量输送给工业化经济的农村廉价劳动力供应枯竭的那个时间点。

贺朋元2002年首次来到北京，2009年他开了一家中通快递分站。

贺朋元说：“我们一切事都自己来。我们从办公室取走包裹，自己打包，自己投递，我们完全是自给自足。”他说那时他们一天只能送12个快件。

贺朋元说：“2009年以来，工资涨了3倍，但快递价没涨。”事实上，现在的快递价格比2009年还低。

他说：“由于竞争，没有公司敢涨价，不然客户会改用别家公司。”

贺朋元预言：“我们的业务量上去了，所以我们能弥补成本，但这一模式不会永远都盈利。”

马芳婧补充报道

回报快速的电子商务推动市场增长

中国的快递业务起步于20世纪90年代初，最初兴起于长三角和珠三角地区，它们是伴随着经济改革成长起来的民营企业集中区域。

申通快递(STO Express)和顺丰速运(SF Express)都成立于1993年，都是为了向国家邮政专营发起挑战。它们之后很快又出现了一大批快递公司。比起国家邮政，这些公司运送包裹的费用更便宜，而且更方便。据德勤(Deloitte)的研究，至2013年中国有8000多家快递企业，著名品牌有20多家。

电商的出现推动了快递行业的增长。据国家邮政局的数据，2010年到2014年，这一行业每年增长速度超过50%。2003年，阿里巴巴推出了淘宝，这是一个eBay式虚拟跳蚤市场，供商家销售商品，也将客户流量带到他们的店铺。阿里巴巴后来又推出了天猫，一个专注于品牌大商家的类似网站。

将买卖双方连接起来的是约12家大型快递公司。这些公司不属于阿里巴巴，但它们是物流企业菜鸟(Cainiao)的合作伙伴。菜鸟48%的股权为阿里巴巴持有。

据今年3月发布的统计数据，去年快递送达包裹数量达1400亿件。中国国家邮政局负责颁发快递服务牌照，据该部门的数据，去年物流行业的市场价值达到2040亿元人民币（约合330亿美元），比上一年上涨了42%，不过这一数据是如何得出的不得而知。

阿里巴巴对快递市场的支配地位无论怎样描述都不夸张。独立物流伙伴企业运送的包裹，有约70%是阿里巴巴带来的。

京东等其他的电商集团与亚马逊(Amazon)一样，拥有自己的物流，并宣称这让他们能够实现从仓库到“最后一英里”投递的垂直整合、带来了一项优势。

在独立物流企业中，顺丰速运的规模最大。由于早期的主导地位和特许经营模式，该公司一直快速发展。

顺丰速运是阿里巴巴的长期合作伙伴。分析师表示该公司可能还会决定要与菜鸟展开竞争。菜鸟在北京、上海和深圳等全国41个大城市都开展了隔日送达业务。

译者/彩云