The Role of Smart Logistics in the China’s Industrial Structure Upgrading

Abstract

With the coming of the fourth industrial revolution, traditional logistics is subject to digital transformation and enters the stage of smart logistics. Now, the Chinese economy is facing double pressures from developed countries and other developing countries. China’s industrial structure is subject to a great pressure of upgrading. In recent decades, China was famous for its infrastructure construction in the world. Smart logistics is the subject of many publications in recent years, but most of these studies focus on the introduction of new technologies, subdomains, and applications. As distinguished from previous studies, this paper is mainly about economic evaluation of smart logistics, its positive effect on the China’s industrial structure upgrading. Using historical analysis as a research method, this study adopts the theory of New Structure Economics and explores the relationship between China’s industrial structure, logistics development, and infrastructure construction. This study shows that the development of smart logistics is in co-evolution with industrial structure upgrading. With the upgrading of China’s industrial structure from labor-intensive and capital-intensive to technology-intensive, logistics has taken the same stages of development which starts from instrumental logistics, interconnected logistics to smart logistics. Smart logistics is endogenous in industrial structure and also can react on it, thus promoting China’s economic growth.