JD.com boss says delivery robots will eventually replace 700,000 workers

Financial Times reported that JD.com founder and chair Richard Liu told the APEC CEO forum in Shenzhen that the company's 700,000 delivery workers will eventually be replaced by robots. Liu said JD.com has signed contracts with about 120 schools to retrain couriers for roles such as robot repair and maintenance, while pilot delivery-robot projects are already running in Shenzhen. The article places the warning inside China's wider labor strain: gig workers are expected to reach 320 million this year, youth unemployment remains high, and Beijing is prioritizing robotics as part of its next five-year plan. Liu said technology should make work more interesting rather than take away people's right to work, but the comments underline how quickly physical automation is moving from demos into workforce planning.

Key details: Published June 22, 2026 at 06:34 UTC, JD.com founder Richard Liu said robots will eventually replace the company's 700,000 couriers, JD.com has contracts with about 120 schools to retrain couriers for robot maintenance roles, FT reported that China's gig-worker population is expected to reach 320 million this year.

Why it matters: This is a concrete labor-displacement signal from a major platform operator, not a generic automation forecast: JD.com is already pairing robot pilots with mass retraining plans.