China's 2025 Logistics Growth Hits CNY 368 Trillion, Costs Fall
China's logistics sector continued its steady expansion in 2025, with total social logistics volume exceeding CNY 368 trillion, according to data released on February 10 by the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing (CFLP). The year marked stronger structural optimization, improved efficiency, and the lowest logistics cost-to-GDP ratio in history, highlighting logistics' growing support for economic development.
In 2025, the total social logistics volume reached CNY 368.2 trillion, a 5.1% increase at comparable prices. Quarterly logistics demand growth remained stable throughout the year. Over the '14th Five-Year Plan' period, social logistics volume has averaged an annual growth of 5.7%, consistently outpacing GDP and demonstrating logistics' strong pull on the real economy.
Industrial goods logistics grew 5.3% year-on-year, contributing 82% to the overall social logistics growth, maintaining its core pillar status. Driven by industrial restructuring, logistics demand in equipment manufacturing and high-tech sectors emerged as key growth engines, each registering growth above 9% in 2025.
Emerging industries showed remarkable logistics demand growth. Industrial robot logistics rose 28% year-on-year, while new energy vehicle logistics increased 25.1%, reflecting the gradual formation of a tightly connected upstream-downstream cycle in new production capacity logistics. Liu Yuhang, Director of China Logistics Information Center, noted that logistics demand for new energy sectors such as industrial robots, new energy vehicles, and carbon fiber maintained double-digit growth, signaling a domestic industrial shift toward higher-end and greener development.
Logistics for unit and household goods grew 5.1% year-on-year, maintaining a steady growth trajectory, while import logistics rose 0.5%, showing a quarterly upward trend. Industrial transformation and consumption upgrades contributed to faster growth in relevant imported goods logistics.
Logistics Costs Decline, Efficiency Gains Consolidated
Structural adjustment and reform policies in 2025 further strengthened the integration of logistics with industry, driving cost reduction across the system. Total social logistics costs reached CNY 19.5 trillion, with the logistics cost-to-GDP ratio dropping to 13.9%, a 0.2 percentage point decrease from 2024.
By component, transportation costs accounted for 7.6% of GDP, management costs 1.7%, and storage costs 4.6%, with the latter down 0.2 percentage points from 2024. Compared with 2020, the overall cost-to-GDP ratio decreased by 0.8 percentage points, highlighting the sustained effectiveness of China's logistics cost reduction efforts.