The founder of China’s Amazon equivalent said his 700,000 blue-collar delivery workers will become office workers in the years to come.
Richard Liu, the billionaire founder of China’s e-commerce behemoth JD.com, said the company has several “Nirvana Plans” underway to “white-collarize” its 700,000 blue-collar workers, including delivery riders.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO forum on Sunday, Liu said that in the age of AI, workers won’t be needed for deliveries. Still, they will be needed to repair or troubleshoot the robots doing the manual labor. So instead of working in the field, the workers will be sitting in offices, and won’t have to work nearly as hard.
“JD.com has therefore signed contracts with 120 schools across China to help these blue-collar workers retrain for new roles, including repairing and maintaining robots,” Liu said.
Liu added that he was advocating for an internationally recognized protocol for adopting AI and robots as social systems change. He said robots should not deprive people of the right to work.
The executive also said in May that JD.com would not fire any employee whose job was being replaced by robots; instead, they would be retrained and reassigned elsewhere.
Deliveries via robots are already commonplace in China, including drones used to deliver food packages. For instance, food delivery giant Meituan said in 2024 that its drones could be deployed to deliver packages to hikers on the Great Wall of China.
Liu’s comments come as e-commerce giants around the world are ramping up their automation efforts to boost productivity. Amazon has a fleet of more than 750,000 robots working in its fulfillment centers.
Other companies have rolled out fleets of delivery robots on city streets. DoorDash launched bright red Dot robots in Phoenix last September, which can travel on footpaths and carry up to 30 pounds of cargo. Companies like Robot.com and Starship are targeting deliveries on college campuses.
Beyond gig work, automation and AI are the biggest buzzwords tied to corporate layoffs this year. Companies like Snap, Wix, and Cisco cited AI as a factor in their recent retrenchments.
