JD.com's Liu: Robots Will Replace 700K Delivery Workers

JD.com founder Richard Liu has stated that robots will replace the company's 700,000 delivery workers "sooner or later." It's not a question of if — just when.

Liu says JD.com will help retrain displaced workers in robot maintenance, offering a bridge to the automated future rather than simply cutting people loose.

The statement highlights a growing tension in China, where rapid technology adoption is raising alarms among policymakers about the fate of millions of gig-economy jobs. When one of the country's biggest e-commerce players openly telegraphs a robotic workforce transition of this scale, those concerns become very concrete.

No timeline was given for the shift. But with 700,000 workers potentially affected, the retraining pledge will face serious scrutiny as automation accelerates across China's logistics sector.