Source: China Daily

12-29-2008 11:37

Special Report:   30 Years of Changes

In the eyes of FedEx Express China head Eddy Chan, the most prominent achievement of China's 30-year transition has been the improvement in the country's transportation infrastructure.

In the 1970s it took a whole day for teenage Chan to travel from Hong Kong to visit relatives in his hometown Bao'an in Guangdong province.

"We had to get up at 5 am, took a train first, crossed the Luohu border (in Shenzhen), and then took a bus. It was already 9 pm when we arrived," recalls Chan, a Hong Kong native.

But now the whole journey takes only an hour.

China's massive investment in building world-class expressway networks, airports, seaports and railways has not only made many Hong Kong people's personal experiences of "going home" more convenient, but also laid a solid foundation for the fast growth of its logistics industry.

The express delivery market is a prime example. Since the 1980s, China's express delivery has been growing at an annual rate of 20 percent, according to China Trade, Marine & Logistics Net. The country now has 2,422 express delivery enterprises with 227,000 employees.

"The express delivery industry is a direct beneficiary of the reform and opening up policy, which has created a fast growing trade volume. Our industry has also improved the economic landscape of China because we are in the business of making goods and information accessible from anywhere," says Chan, FedEx Express senior vice-president for China.

Chan says China has the greatest growth potential for the express and logistics industry amongst emerging markets in Asia. The main reason is the country's position as a nexus of global supply and demand.

China was only a manufacturing center for low-tech, inexpensive consumer products in the 1980s. But since the end of the 1990s, the country has been attracting a growing number of hi-tech factories and its rise up in the industry value chain is creating increasing demand for modern logistics service.

More importantly, with their pockets getting deeper, Chinese people have a growing appetite for all kinds of imported products.

China has been the fastest-growing market for the US. The country surpassed Japan and became the United States' third largest export market in 2007. US goods exported to China increased 17 percent year-on-year in 2007, the eighth straight year of double-digit growth, according to an annual trade report released by the Bush administration in March.