As journalists and analysts continue to glean takeaways from this year’s “Two Sessions” – the annual gathering of China’s parliament and separate political advisory body in Beijing – one group of Chinese workers has been the subject of much discussion at this year’s event: delivery riders.
Last week, Premier Li Qiang set out the protection of the rights and interests of gig workers as a top government priority over the next year in his much-anticipated government work report.
During Sunday’s press conference on the sidelines of the main meetings focused on livelihood issues, China’s Human Resources and Social Security Minister Wang Xiaoping singled out delivery riders as a group whose demands for better social security protections are being heard.
According to Wang, 10 million people working for China’s platform companies including delivery riders have signed up to a government program launched in 2022 that provides occupational injury insurance so far.
The program, which currently covers gig workers in seven provinces and cities including Beijing and Shanghai, will be expanded to 17, she announced, without providing a timeframe or a list of new cities.
Delivery riders were already the subject of public attention in the runup to this year’s meeting, following quickfire announcements in late February by three of China’s biggest delivery platforms – JD.com, Meituan, and Ele.me – that they would greatly expand social security coverage for their respective riders after years of refusing to do so.
China’s gig economy has expanded rapidly in recent years to around 200 million participants, including around 12 million delivery riders. Most of them do not sign traditional employment contracts with their employers and therefore have few benefits or protections.
Their struggles have been the subject of much attention in recent years following a viral investigation by a Chinese magazine in 2020 that revealed the exploitation of delivery riders by platform algorithms that impose near-impossible time requirements for delivering orders.
Last year, the case of a delivery rider in Shandong province who was denied compensation by his employer after being struck with a falling iron plate sparked public backlash. A fictionalized movie and an academic book about the travails of delivery riders were also big hits last year.
While the government has placed pressure on major platforms to improve benefits for riders in recent years, it also introduced stricter delivery rules last March, which riders say have forced them to work longer hours. Lack of collective bargaining rights continue to be a problem, with 300 couriers in Hunan province protesting their employer for reportedly laying them off without compensation last December.
Several proposals by members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the advisory body, at this year’s meeting revolved around issues accessing social security benefits in different parts of the country – a common complaint among delivery riders at a time when many of them are leaving major cities to return home for work.
Zhai Meiqing, president of the Hong Kong conglomerate Heung Kong Group, suggested simplifying the procedures for transferring social security from region to region; Lu Ming, a professor of economics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, proposed building a unified national social security system; and Zheng Gongcheng, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, advocated for more choices for gig workers when it comes to how they pay for and access their social security benefits.
In her remarks Sunday, Wang mentioned the possibility of relaxing household registration, or hukou, restrictions on gig workers so that they can more easily access pension insurance and social security benefits in different parts of the country. No further details were provided.