The Beihang drone will incorporate lots of artificial intelligence, enabling it to not only control itself during entire flights but also autonomously determine and cope with malfunctions, Zhang said. It will cruise at a high speed, 360 km/h, and be able to take off and land on short, rough runways.

Typical delivery drones are small models used on a small, experimental scale by a handful of technology-savvy firms like Amazon.com, DHL Express and Chinese online retail giant JD.com.

No other mass-produced civilian drone is as big or powerful as the Beihang model. Several unmanned, solar-powered planes have a longer wingspan but weigh much less and were designed for technological demonstrations.

The world's largest drone is the United States' Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, a military surveillance craft that is 14.5 m long and with a wingspan of 39.9 m and a maximum takeoff weight of nearly 15 tons.

China has been the world's largest express service market for four years. Couriers delivered more than 40 billion packages in the country in 2017, earning total revenue of nearly 500 billion yuan ($78 billion), according to the National Bureau of Statistics.