Everyone is concerned about the impact of covid-induced lockdowns in Shanghai and other Chinese cities on the economy – just not sure by how much (and for how long).

Now some of the official scorecards are starting to come out. We find the following, which measures express delivery activities, particularly interesting:

In the first 4 months of 2022, express delivery industry in China collectively completed 31.7 billion parcels, a 4.2% increase from the same period last year; revenue grew by 2.3% to CNY313.33b (US$46.44b).

Amongst these, 3.85 billion parcels were intra-city, which was a 0.5% YoY drop; inter-city deliveries saw 27.31 billion parcels, a 5.7% YoY growth; cross border deliveries dropped 23.4% to 560 million.

In the month of April 2022 in particular, 7.48 billion parcels were delivered, or a 11.9% drop YoY; revenue dropped 10.1% to CNY74.05 billion (US$11 billion).

From January to April, intra-city, inter-city and cross border parcel volumes represented 12.1%, 86.1% and 1.8% of the total respectively; revenue wise the numbers were 6.6%, 48,7% and 11%. Compared to the same period last year, inter-city volume as a percentage of the total grew a bit, while other sub-verticals dropped:

From January to April, Eastern, Central and Western parts of China represented 77.3%, 15.2% and 7.5% respectively of the total volume, as well as 77.5%, 13.2% and 9.3% respectively of the revenue:

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Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].