By Xixi Jiang
They are easy to spot in their bright yellow or blue heavy-duty jackets; they deftly weave through rush hour traffic on their quiet electric bikes; they are an indispensable part of Chinese urban life today. They are food delivery riders, most likely working for one of China’s two biggest competing online food delivery service platforms, Meituan (美团外卖) and Ele.me (饿了么). This relatively new branch of the service sector has seen a tremendous expansion in market size over the past decade, from 21.68 billion yuan (3.31 billion USD) in 2011 to an estimated 664.62 billion yuan (101 billion USD) in 2020.[1] Following the industry boom, there has also been an increase in attention devoted to the working conditions of delivery riders, who are the backbone of this lucrative business. In this essay, I will consider the public perception of food delivery workers, which range from friendly strangers to civilian heroes; these glorified images, produced consciously and unconsciously by corporations and consumers alike, have come to mask the dangerous conditions of their work and, more importantly, to supplant real benefits in wages and protection for the workers. The construction of public personas is certainly not the entire cause of their present predicament, but studying it may give way to larger investigations into the positive stigmatization of certain kinds of work, and call for more direct ways of being in solidarity with workers.
I. Overview of Labor Conditions
On September 8, 2020, an article gained overwhelming public attention immediately after it was published by the official WeChat account of Portrait, a Chinese Magazine. Titled “Delivery Workers, Trapped in the Algorithm,” the exposé details the ways in which both Meituan and Ele.me’s algorithms force their employees to take extreme risks in order to deliver orders on time, often resulting in physical harm and mental distress to the workers themselves.[2] According to a disclaimer at the top of the webpage, the team at Portrait used qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct a comprehensive, six-month long investigation of the issue. The article itself, a piece of excellent sociological research, consists of interviews with delivery workers from all over the country, data from corporate reports, and discussions of findings with sociology experts.
Though the view count of the article stopped at “100k+” a long time ago, responses to the delivery workers’ conditions have been strong and are still ongoing. The public reacted with disbelief and outrage upon discovering that in Shanghai there is on average one fatal injury within the workforce every two and a half days. One Meituan employee interviewed for the article claims to be on his third electric bike, having damaged and ruined the previous two in traffic accidents; another insists he would lose half of his business every day if he broke no traffic laws. The pressure to make the target time calculated by the platform is immense: if an order arrives late, half of the wage for that order will be deducted; moreover, the delivery person risks being given a bad review or being the subject of a complaint phone call to the platform, both of which could pose a serious threat to their job. In one interview, a Meituan delivery man describes his state at the end of a work day: “my whole body is numb; I only have reflexes left, no human emotional response.”[3] The algorithm is written not to accommodate workers’ needs but to optimize time as capital. This logic is reminiscent of British historian E. P. Thompson’s concept of timed labor in the post-industrialization era. The “tyranny of the clock” is quite literal here: these platforms squeeze the largest possible profit out of each delivery worker’s time.[4] Time-keeping—in this case, the unforgiving clock that begins its countdown once an order is accepted—is utilized as a means of control and discipline.
II. The “Brotherly” Stranger
There is a widely used nickname for delivery workers in Chinese: “外卖小哥.” While the first two characters mean “takeout”, the latter half of the phrase (“小哥”) is an endearing way of referring to a young man, with the last character literally meaning “older brother.” Using this term for someone in Chinese is a way of demonstrating closeness, familiarity and respect. Indeed, food delivery workers in China enjoy a reputation of being the friendly strangers of the city scene. With the vibrant colors of their uniforms and helmets, their presence in the streets is at once highly recognizable and so ubiquitous that it blends into the urban landscape with ease. The playful decorations of their helmets are an interesting case: starting last year, some Meituan riders began to add large yellow kangaroo ears to their helmets (the company mascot is a kangaroo), while Ele.me riders glued plastic propellers to the top of their helmets to resemble the beloved Japanese anime character Doraemon. As it turns out, these choices were not individual or coincidental: the accessories were given to the workers by their respective companies to compete with one another in advertising themselves as relatable and fun, in order to promote likeability among customers.[5] Their ventures proved to be largely successful: customers found these additions to the helmets to be creative and fun. Meituan has even launched a line of yellow kangaroo ear headbands.
Apart from endearing themselves to consumers with customized helmets, both Meituan and Ele.me also present an in-app chat function, which allows users to interact with delivery workers and restaurants directly. People often take to social media to share a pleasant or funny encounter they had with a delivery worker. One person posted to his WeChat a screenshot of his text conversation with an Ele.me employee, who was scheduled to deliver his Sichuan takeout. Presumably seeing the rider stray from his path on the tracking feature of the app, the customer texted him to turn around, to which the rider replied: “The cops are chasing me. Be right back!” This fairly serious situation, which represents a small fraction of the dangers and difficulties a delivery worker faces every day, elicited not concern, but amusement when posted to the Internet. (This phenomenon is by no means unique to China, and is fairly common in the US as well—entertainment media outlets like Buzzfeed love to publish compilations of texts or “funny” incidents with delivery workers.[6])
However, behind this lovable “brotherly” image is the emotional labor of upholding it. In the Portrait exposé, many delivery workers reported giving in to insensible requests from customers in order to avoid a bad review.[7] Occasionally, in the “Add a note” section of the chat box, people ask them for big and small favors that fall outside of their job descriptions. Sometimes they’re asked to bring cigarettes or razors on their way over, other times it’s something minor yet bewildering: one rider named Wang Bing claims he was repeatedly asked to draw a picture of Peppa Pig, a children’s cartoon character, on the receipt; he later discovered that it was a TikTok trend; other demands include being asked to write poems, replicate a complicated traditional painting, or perform a song at the karaoke bar where the rider made the dropoff.[8] Those who made these kinds of requests may have done so in what they thought to be good humor, or simply without much thought given, but they happen to come off as especially condescending and annoying for delivery workers. The fun, brotherly image quickly becomes exploitative. A sense of imagined proximity becomes the rationale for these unreasonable and insulting demands. In the same way delivery workers are “trapped” in the algorithm of the platform, they are also trapped in this required performance, which takes a mental toll on them in addition to the physical strain that they are put through daily. Most workers do not feel like they can refuse these requests for fear of complaints and negative reviews. As a result, they often have no choice but to comply and extend themselves emotionally to please customers by fulfilling their arbitrary wishes. This invisible labor has largely been neglected and uncompensated.
III. The Civilian Hero
If the friendly stranger trope shrunk the distance between food delivery workers and their consumers, the civilian hero narrative gives this image an additional moral dimension and elevates their status to unrealistic heights. Common adjectives associated with food delivery workers on the internet include “diligent,” “conscientious” and “hard-working,” all of which are considered desirable qualities in line with the Confucian belief that enduring hardships trains one’s character. In Hangzhou, a food delivery worker waited outside a customer’s house for an hour and called his cellphone 47 times before the customer remembered to pick up his order. The worker claimed that he was worried someone else would take the food if he had just left it at the door, and that he felt a responsibility to “see it through.”[9] After the forgetful customer posted this incident to Weibo (China’s biggest social media platform), the majority of comments under the post praised the worker’s professionalism. However, what was hailed as “respect for occupation” was, in reality, a situation in which the delivery worker was forced to make a difficult decision between losing the order and losing time to make more deliveries; of course, neither the platform nor the customer would have been responsible for either loss. Though the Weibo comments may have good intentions, they ultimately force workers to take the moral high ground and, in doing so, to reinforce their vulnerability in situations like this one.
Another, and perhaps the most far-fetched romanticization of this workforce is an ideologically tinged one. In keeping with the socialist state’s tradition of celebrating its exemplary workers, certain media articles, when extolling delivery workers, have adopted a tone that distinctly resembles state propaganda. An article titled “Party Members Should Learn From Delivery Workers” was published by a news outlet under Tencent, the same Chinese tech giant that owns WeChat, in which their dedication to work and “love for the people” are commended as an example to all.[10] In another, more recent article, titled “Party Members are Delivery Workers,” the connection is made much more explicit. “In a sense, our party members are a kind of delivery workers,” the article reads, “only instead of delivering food and goods to one household, we deliver policies, laws, infrastructures, and good initiatives to a group, a region or even the whole country.”[11] At the same time, these articles tend to downplay the real dangers of delivery work by reducing them to vague abstractions. In fact, the only concrete example for their hard labor mentioned in the second article is that “the majority of them wake up at 5 in the morning and do not stop working until 6 in the evening,” which may be the least of their concerns.[12]
Regardless of the ideological charge, there is an interesting cognitive dissonance at play here: the risks these delivery workers face are perversely taken as proof of their good moral character or their love for their job. The reaction is the same in the US context: in a TIME video interview of a Chinese food delivery worker, the top comment reads: “They are unsung heroes. My salute to those ordinary men.”[13] It is not uncommon to see comments on Weibo expressing feelings of being “moved” by their hardships. The danger is precisely this: it is difficult for delivery workers to be seen as real people in need of basic safety and security once they have been placed on a pedestal. In the same manner that essential workers like teachers and nurses are often offered expressions of praise, gratitude, and admiration for performing functions vital for society but are denied pay raises and safe working conditions, the food delivery occupation gets moralized, and delivery workers’ labor gets taken for granted.
IV. The Consequences of Glorification
Despite these concerns, some may still insist that it is overall beneficial to view delivery work in a positive light, especially if it helps to combat the stigmatization around service jobs. After all, isn’t it desirable to feel good about one’s work? Why shouldn’t society celebrate food delivery workers given that, for many, it is indeed more than deserved?
To be sure, empathy and appreciation from the public are good and important, especially in moments of crisis when a sense of togetherness is needed. Most delivery workers are happy to receive recognition for the extraordinary effort they put into their work. However, this glorification often takes the place of actual wages and protections. The term “psychological wage” was first coined by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois to describe the emotional benefits that white laborers derived from a sense of superiority over their Black counterparts in the Reconstruction-era South. In the context of Chinese food delivery workers, this additional “wage” comes not from whiteness, but from adulation and glorification. What they need is a change in material conditions: namely, better wages, a safer work environment, the implementation of a hazard pay system and secure contracts; instead, they are heroized and praised instead of being given real benefits. In this sense, positive stigmatization can have no less harmful—if more obscured—consequences than negative stigmatization by ways of appeasing and placating. This brings to mind an article in The New Republic magazine, published earlier this year, in which Musaub Khan, a medical worker in New York during the first wave of the pandemic, describes the ways in which media outlets have been glorifying the struggle of frontline healthcare professionals without explicitly challenging the hazardous conditions of their work environment or the root cause: exploitation at an institutional level: “We are applauded for endangering our lives to help others, but in reality, there is seldom a choice.”[14] Indeed, the sense that there is no other real choice comes up frequently in interviews with riders. Though it may seem as though they “choose” to violate traffic laws in order to deliver orders faster, the cost of the alternative—running late and getting fines or bad ratings—is simply too high. To assume that these conditions are their free choice is to tacitly accept unfair labor practices and to permit the continuation of such practices. In doing so, we miss the opportunity to interrogate the problem on a structural level and become complicit in their oppression.
V. Conclusion
After the aforementioned exposé shed light on the exploitative algorithm and the high risk work environment it produced, Meituan and Ele.me came out with statements encouraging customers to be more patient with their orders and tip delivery workers more. Both were met with sharp criticism over the obvious attempt to shift responsibility onto consumers. One upside is a newly added document on mental health information, posted to Meituan’s website, which contains resources from coping techniques when dealing with negative emotions to a rider hotline for immediate counseling. However, it is unclear how well this feature works; moreover, the sudden attention to mental healthcare could be interpreted as yet another attempt to placate delivery workers and avoid making changes to the business model. Ele.me, on the other hand, received less scrutiny in the exposé compared to Meituan, and developed no similar feature.
There are other concerns with food delivery jobs beyond the scope of this paper: some are unique to the industry, others are larger issues within labor relations in China. The rise of the competitive gig economy allows corporations to get away with providing low wages, no health insurance, and little financial security. There are inherent difficulties of unionizing within the Chinese political framework. In the event of striking and protesting, the government tends to be more concerned with economic development, and sides with employers over workers in the majority of cases recorded by the China Labour Bulletin.[15]
Earlier this year, when the country was in the middle of a nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19, the food delivery service sector shouldered an outsized civil responsibility. According to Meituan’s latest reports, its workers, spread across 2800 Chinese cities and towns, delivered food, medication, groceries and other daily necessities to 400 million users in the first half of 2020 alone.[16] In February, the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security added food delivery workers to its national list of officially recognized occupations.[17] It was an acknowledgement of their vital contributions during the pandemic, but it also means that it is now more important than ever to strip away labels of “civilian heroes” and instead shift public attention from symbolic gestures toward pushing for concrete improvements in wages, employee benefits and job security for delivery workers. The present challenge is to replace flattery with real change. As Khan simply puts at the end of her article: “The truth is, nobody wants to be a hero. We just want to be safe.”[18]
[1] iiMedia Research. “Market Size of Online Food Delivery Service in China from 2011 to 2019 with An Estimate for 2020 (in Billion Yuan).” Statista, Statista Inc., 23 Jun 2020.
[2] “Delivery Workers, Trapped in the Algorithm.” (“外卖骑手，困在系统里。”) Portrait Magazine (人物) , 8 Sep 2020. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Mes1RqIOdp48CMw4pXTwXw.
[3] Ibid.
[4] E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past & Present, no. 38, 1967, pp. 56–97.
[5] “The Helmet War between Meituan and Ele.me.” (“美团外卖和饿了么开启头盔大战。”) Zhihu (“知乎”), 28 Jul 2020.
[6] Ryan Schocket. “15 Texts From Food Delivery Workers That’ll Make You LOL.” BuzzFeed, 4 Mar. 2020, www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/15-food-delivery-people-who-make-me-nervous.
[7] “Delivery Workers, Trapped in the Algorithm.”
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Delivery Man Waits One Hour in an Act of Professionalism.” (“外卖小哥等1小时，诠释职业精神。”) Tencent Net, 15 Dec 2019, https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20191215A0HEWB00.
[10] “Party Members Should Learn From Delivery Workers.” (“党员干部不妨有一点‘快递小哥’精神。”) Tencent Net, 11 Feb 2019, https://new.qq.com/omn/20190211/20190211F0Q9WC.html.
[11] “Party Members are Delivery Workers.” (“党员干部也是‘快递小哥’。”) Sohu, 26 Mar 2020, https://www.sohu.com/a/383262837_120633643.
[12] Ibid.
[13] “Life Of A Delivery Driver in China As The Country Fights To Contain The Coronavirus Outbreak | TIME.” YouTube, uploaded by TIME, 16 Mar 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyt2YfZGF2I.
[14] Musaub Khan, “The Problem With Heroizing Health Care Workers Like Me.” The New Republic, 20 Apr 2020, newrepublic.com/article/157354/problem-heroizing-health-care-workers-like.
[15] “Workers’ rights and labour relations in China.” China Labour Bulletin, 13 Aug 2020.
[16] “Delivery Workers, Trapped in the Algorithm.”
[17] Daniel Chen, “Heroism & Survival: Chinese Food Delivery Workers.” China Hands, 5 Oct 2020.
[18] Musaub Khan, “The Problem With Heroizing Health Care Workers Like Me.”
Xixi Jiang (she/her) is currently a senior at Gallatin, concentrating in urban sociology and public spaces. She likes to watch disturbing movies, play chess (badly), and take walks in the city. She is working with an NYC urban justice organization this semester on a fellowship through the UDL, and is thrilled to be a part of the editorial collective for Intersections.