Americans sent more packages through USPS between 2013 and 2023, and Chinese users added more people to WeChat in the same years, and the two numbers have risen together (r = 0.958) in a way that should feel like globalization doing its job. One agency delivers boxes; one app delivers everything else. Both, it turns out, have been operating at near-capacity for several years now.
USPS package volume climbed from about 3.7 billion in 2013 to over 6.6 billion by 2023, driven almost entirely by Amazon's outsourcing of last-mile delivery (the 2013 Sunday deal was the inflection point) and the broader e-commerce migration. WeChat monthly active users grew from about 300 million to over 1.3 billion in the same window, as the app absorbed functions that elsewhere would belong to separate services — messaging, payments, ride-hail, dating, small business ordering. Both are infrastructures that became indispensable before anyone noticed, and both are now politically sensitive in ways nobody anticipated in 2013.
A box is scanned. A message pings. Both systems carry more traffic than they were designed for, dutifully.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “USPS package volume” vs “WeChat monthly active users” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
