This is a good time to be in the package delivery business in China. Last year, Chinese bought 1.85 trillion yuan ($300 billion) worth of goods online. There were 9.2 billion deliveries in 2013, a 60 percent increase, worth 143 billion yuan, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Only the express delivery market in the U.S. is bigger. All that activity should translate into business for United Parcel Service and FedEx. Both have been building China operations for decades, with FedEx entering the market in 1984 and UPS following in 1988. By 2009, FedEx had 58 Chinese branches to UPS's 33. But the two have gone into reverse since then. Not only have they not opened new branches, but they also have had to seek reapproval for existing operations. After a new law governing the industry was passed in 2009, the State Post Bureau decided that all carriers, local and foreign, needed new licenses. FedEx and UPS are still waiting for the regulator to grant many of theirs.
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