Over 200 million people in China eat takeaways every day: how much do we really know?
Foodthink Perspectives
The most apparent change is in how people consume food.
According to media reports, 275 million people rely on the Meituan platform each week for their dining needs, from browsing for restaurants and making decisions based on rankings to placing orders, dining in, or ordering delivery to their door. In 2023, the user base of food delivery platforms in China reached a staggering 535 million. Of these, 4.08% of consumers order delivery more than 20 times a week (averaging 3-4 times daily), 13.52% order between 11 and 20 times (averaging 2-3 times daily), and 32.78% order between 5 and 10 times (averaging 1-2 times daily). In other words, nearly half of the urban population in China orders delivery almost every day.
It is not just prepared meals that rely on delivery; even for those cooking at home, the ingredients are increasingly sourced from e-commerce. Led by industry giants such as Dingdong Maicai, JD Daojia, Xiaoxiang Supermarket, and Hema, the number of fresh produce e-commerce companies in China reached 26,300 in 2023, with a user base of 513 million. Transactions through these platforms accounted for 29.4% of the total food expenditure of urban residents.
These delivery and grocery platforms initially won public approval in the name of ‘convenience’, ‘efficiency’, and ‘intelligence’. However, their negative impact on society and the environment—and even on food quality and safety—has become increasingly prominent. Of particular concern are the workers behind these platforms, epitomised by the delivery riders.
Throughout 2024, the media, academics, and filmmakers have produced extensive reports, research, and creative works focusing on food delivery and e-commerce platforms. Here, we have curated the most striking stories, events, and works from the past year, including Foodthink’s own original content, reports from institutional and independent media, as well as two new books and two films. Foodthink will continue to monitor the digital technologies and capital driving food production and consumption in 2025, examining their impact on both nature and people within the food system. We welcome contributions, research collaborations, and discussions from like-minded creators.
Delivery Riders Begging Online and the ‘Order Kings’ Who Dropped Dead on Their Scooters
However, he was informed that Meituan’s crowdsourcing insurance would not cover the accident. While waiting for a resolution, he gradually exhausted his life savings.
Driven by hunger and cold, and after a desperate struggle, he eventually cast aside his pride and turned to strangers online to beg for food…
But not all riders live long enough to reach the point of begging online. In August 2024, a delivery rider in Hangzhou died suddenly while on his electric scooter. According to media reports, the rider, a 55-year-old surnamed Yuan, worked relentlessly, often resting for only three or four hours a day, and was well-known locally as an ‘Order King’.
Hangzhou delivery rider forced to ‘kneel’, sparking mass protests among peers
What happened to the ‘Kangaroo Family’ where five out of six family members delivered food?
After two years with Meituan, the family was ‘optimised’ (laid off) following last year’s Spring Festival, and Ma Chuang’s income dropped significantly. Moreover, his father was involved in a traffic accident while working, which made him realize that delivery riding is a ‘high-risk industry’. In May 2024, Ma Chuang decided to return to his hometown in Henan to chart a new course for his life.
However, he found that the internal biological clock created by the demands of food delivery had left a deep imprint on him; he still struggles to escape the ‘delivery circle’ that lingers in his subconscious.
Platform algorithms and delivery riders’ KPIs
Precarious employment, low wages, poor benefits, rigid attendance tracking, and overwork are the defining characteristics of this digital gig economy. Furthermore, because these roles are easily replaceable and the work is fragmented, these digital labourers have almost no collective bargaining power during labour disputes. Most crucially, while algorithms and AI have strengthened the platforms’ control over digital workers, the platforms attempt to mask their pursuit of maximum efficiency and profit under the guise of ‘technological progress’. In this environment, digital labourers are alienated, transformed into mere physical machines governed by algorithms.
Controlled by platforms and algorithms, riders have no choice but to run themselves to exhaustion, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.
►For more news and discussions regarding delivery riders, please refer to the 2024 Review of Labour Rights Events:Supporting Each Other in Hard Times | 2024 Review of Labour Rights Events
Who should be responsible for food safety in deliveries?
In August 2024, CCTV News exposed a group of ‘ghost kitchens’ that leased licenses to operate, using fake addresses and photos to become top-rated, high-volume stores. At the same time, it revealed food safety issues at several delivery shops, some of which were found to be operating right next to waste recycling centres.
These are not merely isolated incidents of food safety failure. As early as 2016, the CCTV ‘3.15’ gala exposed the chaos of delivery platforms partnering with unlicensed restaurants. Eight years later, the problem persists. In the pursuit of market share, platforms turn a blind eye to problematic merchants. Some industry insiders argue that the platforms’ low-price strategies have, to some extent, led to a situation where the ‘bad money drives out the good’.
But is ordering from a well-known, prestigious restaurant any better? Chen Xiaoqing, a renowned food programme director, recently revealed in a conversation with Luo Yonghao that he has no delivery apps on his phone and never eats delivery food, regardless of whether the restaurant has high ratings or rave reviews, ‘because I have been too deep in this industry’. As for the specific reasons, ‘it is difficult to say, and it is something that cannot be said’.
When delivery platforms not only fail to guarantee food safety but actually encourage and drive an illicit food industry, we must ask: what value does this business model truly offer the consumer?
The film ‘Upstream’: Why was it neither a critical nor a commercial success?
Unsurprisingly, the film fell far short of the commercial expectations of Xu Zheng and his investors, garnering countless negative reviews and sparking public debate over how capital uses cultural products to further commodify and exploit the underclass.
Particularly in the final scenes, Xu Zheng attempts to resolve the conflict between delivery platforms and riders with a superficial solution—one that completely clashes with the public’s actual experience of systemic social pressure. In this sense, even as an opportunistic businessman, Xu Zheng failed to grasp the collective emotional landscape this time.
A director reflecting on algorithms: focusing a debut feature on delivery riders and programmers
This perhaps extends beyond programmers and riders; in modern society, as people become consumed by their own frantic workloads, relationships become distant and cold, sometimes even devolving into an irreconcilable hostility.
It is only after the protagonist himself is laid off that he realises programmers and riders are simply two different groups of people trapped under the same platform capital and algorithms, neither in control of their own destiny.
The film ends with the tragedy of a rider’s death, but it does not commodify the suffering of the poor. Having experienced this firsthand, the protagonist makes an “unexpected” life choice: rather than being bought out by capital again, as the protagonist in *Upstream* was, he chooses to stand with the riders and fight the platform together, seeking new hope through individual choice and action.
Perhaps this is what the film seeks to inspire and encourage us: in a society where misfortune and tragedy truly exist, if we can truly see one another, consciousness will awaken and change will follow.
Film vs. Reality: what is the life of a real delivery rider actually like?
Overwork in the digital race
Chen Long argues that the labour process for riders on a platform differs from that of factory workers, as they are not controlled solely by rules set by an employer. On one hand, control is not held exclusively by the platform; merchants and customers fragment this power, which superficially shifts and weakens the tensions between labour and capital. On the other hand, control itself is becoming increasingly opaque; riders only see surface-level instructions via the platform, unable to discern who is truly pulling the strings.
While riders seem to have escaped the collective environment of the factory, achieving individual “freedom” and the promise that “the harder you work, the more you earn”, digital technology allows platform management to be exerted on every individual. This creates a contradictory fusion of “freedom” and “control”. According to Chen Long’s observations, since the inception of delivery platforms, the freedom riders have to manage their own labour has steadily shrunk, while platform control has progressively tightened.
“Transitional” refers to the high degree of mobility and uncertainty inherent in the job. Sun Ping observed that while riders often claim that delivering food is just a “transition”, this transition frequently becomes a permanent, normalised state. Once these highly mobile riders enter the gig economy, most never return to traditional roles such as factory work. Their “transitional” nature manifests as jumping between platforms: delivering food today, switching to courier work in a while, and perhaps ride-hailing later.
For today’s gig workers, life and labour, production and reproduction, have never been so tightly entwined. Sun Ping hopes to move beyond a narrow framework of “control” to describe gig labour on digital platforms. She aims to depict the holistic nature of the riders’ lives—not just their labour status and trajectories, but also their personal lives, families, friendships, and thoughts—thereby revealing the tension-filled interaction between an individual’s life course and their labour.
It should be noted that after the book’s publication, it sparked a heated online debate. The authors and editors of the *People* magazine report “Delivery Riders, Trapped in the System”—which first linked delivery riders to algorithmic control—condemned Sun Ping for inappropriately claiming her role in that reporting. This ignited a discussion on research ethics and the norms of interaction between scholars and the media.
While this incident appeared to be a copyright dispute, the actual focal point was the extensive social influence of the original article and the struggle over the cultural capital that such influence can be converted into within media and academic circles.
Some argue that since delivery riders still live and work in the real world, such disputes seem particularly ironic and trivial. However, we should recognise the serious implications: if a researcher’s primary goal is to convert the discourse surrounding delivery riders into cultural or economic capital, can such a motive ensure they always speak fairly on behalf of the workers? If delivery platforms provide certain resources to the media or scholars on this topic, does the actual story of the rider still matter?
Ultimately, the purpose for which media and academic professionals “speak for” delivery riders may determine how the public perceives them. And this determines whether real action and change can occur.
Convenience Bee: Alienating Staff into Biological Machines
However, Bianlifeng was perhaps more radical than most internet tech companies. Founder Zhuang Chenchao sought to “remove all human decision-making from daily operations and hand it over to computers,” creating a complete automated control system. A staff member’s workday was broken down into 70–80 simple tasks, leaving them only to mechanically execute a series of routine chores such as sweeping, wiping, restocking, and preparing meals.
While traditional convenience stores take two years to train a manager, Bianlifeng required only six months. Replacing managers with algorithmic systems did indeed enable Bianlifeng’s meteoric expansion, but the cost was an extremely oppressive working environment for staff who lost their autonomy, as well as high instability regarding their workplace due to frequent transfers between stores.
Ironically, it proved that algorithms are not necessarily superior to humans in operational decision-making. After several years of rapid expansion, reports of layoffs and store closures began to emerge from Bianlifeng in late 2021, with the number of stores plummeting from over 3,000 to just over 1,000.
Today, Bianlifeng is no longer the darling of capital, and its operational model—overly dependent on algorithms—has come under scrutiny.
Replacing Digital Oligarchs with Cooperatives: An Alternative Delivery Model
In recent years, the emerging international trend of “platform cooperativism” has been seen as an alternative path. It reverses the logic of “platform capitalism” to some extent, with Europe’s CoopCycle being a prime example. This is a federation of European bicycle delivery cooperatives operating in 16 cities. They developed a free, open-source delivery app, allowing riders in various cities to further develop the app according to local needs and create their own bicycle delivery platform cooperatives.
Unlike typical platform companies, CoopCycle merely provides riders with necessary information tools. It does not extract profit from every order; instead, it charges 2.5% of each cooperative’s added value (no less than €500 per year) to cover its own operations. Meanwhile, they provide assistance to riders and cooperatives in areas including business models, skills training, and consumer communication. The cooperatives emphasise: “Money should not make money; all benefits should flow to the workers. You only earn money by cycling.”
CoopCycle views itself as a “digital commons”. Data and information generated during the delivery process belong to the cooperative, and they do not use information technology to surveil delivery riders. There is a clear employment relationship between riders and the cooperative, with pay calculated based on hours worked rather than order volume, providing benefits such as minimum wage, unemployment insurance, health insurance, and paid leave. Through a direct democratic management model of “one cooperative, one vote; one person, one vote”, riders hold management and decision-making power within the cooperative.
The story of CoopCycle fully demonstrates that digital technology and delivery services are not the problem. When power is held by the workers, technology and platforms can achieve a win-win situation for workers, consumers, and the environment.
The Path to Legislation for Platform Workers in Singapore
As one of the first countries in the world to establish specific legal protections for platform workers, Singapore’s Platform Workers Bill is seen as a milestone, providing a valuable reference for China and other countries in solving labour protection issues within the platform economy.
Following the enactment of the bill, Grab, Singapore’s primary ride-hailing and delivery platformGrab, announced that starting in 2025, it will charge an additional SGD 0.20 (approx. 1 RMB) per order on top of existing platform fees to cover the cost of the new law. Whether this move will truly protect workers’ rights, and whether it is worth emulating domestically, is something we will continue to monitor.
How will you eat in 2025?
We welcome you to leave a comment and share your views. We also invite partners interested in writing and research to join our writing community, so we can collectively continue to focus on the issues of labour, health, and the environment behind our food.
Editor: Tianle