When JD.com chairman Richard Liu said last week that robots would “sooner or later” replace the company’s 700,000 delivery workers, he was describing, in unusually candid terms, a direction the whole sector has been moving toward for years.
Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan are each deploying self-driving delivery robots and drones to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, but their strategies differ in scope and emphasis.
Meituan has moved furthest in last-mile automation. In April 2025, China’s civil aviation authority granted the company’s fourth-generation drone a national full-territory operating licence — the first of its kind anywhere in the world — authorising commercial drone delivery across the entire country under a single certificate, without requiring route-by-route approval.
By late 2025, Meituan Drone had opened 65 routes across cities including Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Dubai, completing more than 740,000 orders. The company’s vice president for its drone division has said he envisions drones eventually handling 10 to 15 percent of all instant deliveries worldwide.
Read more about this topic: JD.com chairman says robots will eventually replace 700,000 delivery workers. What China’s retraining plan actually covers
Meituan has been careful, however, to frame automation as complementary rather than substitutional. The company does not intend to fully replace the millions of couriers it employs with unmanned systems, and says automation would help relieve pressure on its already overwhelmed delivery platform.
That framing matters: Meituan committed to providing social security benefits to a significant portion of its rider workforce starting in the second quarter of 2025, a move driven in part by regulatory pressure and public scrutiny over rider welfare.
Alibaba’s approach has been concentrated further up the supply chain. Its logistics arm Cainiao is building a new wave of robotic warehouses across Europe, North America, and Asia, deploying next-generation warehouse robots alongside an AI-powered scheduling system designed to coordinate operations across robotic fleets.
On last-mile delivery, Alibaba has taken a more incremental path, its Xiaomanlv autonomous robots have been deployed primarily on university campuses, a controlled environment well removed from the complexity of urban streets.
Read more: Uber, Nissan and Wayve start robotaxis programme in Japan in 2026 (with video)
The competitive dynamics between the three companies are sharpening the automation push. After Alibaba’s Taobao Instant Commerce passed 40 million daily orders within a month of its 2025 launch, the battle for the one-hour delivery market intensified, compressing margins across the sector. When platforms compete on subsidies, the efficiency gains promised by automation become less optional and more structural.
The employment question, though, remains unresolved across the board. None of the three companies has specified what automation means for their combined workforce of millions of gig workers.
JD.com’s retraining pledge covers 120 educational institutions; Meituan’s social security commitment covers a portion of its riders. Neither addresses the longer-term arithmetic of a sector that is simultaneously expanding delivery volumes and reducing its dependence on human labour to fulfil them.
