JD.com boss says robots will replace 700,000 couriers

TL;DR:

• JD.com founder Richard Liu says the firm’s 700,000 delivery workers will be replaced by robots “sooner or later”.
• The company has signed deals with about 120 schools to retrain couriers to repair and maintain robots.
• China’s gig workforce is set to reach 320 million this year, deepening policymakers’ automation fears.

The head of one of China’s biggest ecommerce groups has warned that its 700,000 delivery workers will eventually be replaced by robots, underlining the threat rapid automation poses to an already strained jobs market. “In the future, when robots are delivering parcels, sooner or later, there will be a day when couriers are basically no longer needed,” JD.com founder Richard Liu told an APEC forum in Shenzhen. “But I really do not want our 700,000 brothers to go without meals, without jobs.”

Retraining as a hedge

Liu said JD.com has signed contracts with around 120 schools to retrain couriers for new work such as repairing and maintaining robots, reasoning that machines “will always, at some point, have faults”. He did not forecast when robot deliveries would become widespread, though pilots are already running, including airport food-delivery robots in Shenzhen. The comments tap into mounting policymaker concern: China’s gig workforce — blue-collar roles such as delivery, factory work and ride-hailing — is set to hit 320 million this year, up from 200 million five years ago, and now accounts for around 40% of urban employment. Youth unemployment stood at 16.3% in April.

Beijing has put robotics “at the heart of its modern industrial system” in its latest five-year plan, even as officials promise to expand social-insurance coverage for gig workers and watch for new roles such as “AI trainers and drone pilots”. Human Rights Watch urged stronger protections, warning that “promises on paper will mean little unless workers can organise”.

Looking forward

The warning is striking for coming from an employer, not a critic — a chief executive openly forecasting the obsolescence of his own workforce. For UK readers, JD.com is not abstract: it runs the Joybuy platform in Britain and across Europe, and is the subject of an EU foreign-subsidies probe into its €2.2bn (£1.9bn) bid for German retailer Ceconomy. More broadly, Liu’s blunt timeline is a real-world test of the optimistic claim that automation creates as many jobs as it destroys. The retraining-into-robot-maintenance pitch is the same bet many Western firms are making — and its credibility at this scale remains unproven.