Working from sun up to sun down, China’s delivery drivers caught in a price war

Beijing: It’s after 10pm on Thursday evening and Mu Jie has clocked off after 13 hours of delivering groceries across Beijing on his electric scooter.

He made 65 deliveries in that time, zipping through traffic to beat red lights, racing on foot through apartment complexes and, when there were no elevators, climbing as many flights of stairs as it took to hand over the groceries in person.

It’s punishing work, and Mu’s daily earnings typically don’t top 400 yuan, or little more than $1.20 an order. In the past month, he’s averaged 85 orders a day, with six days of 100-plus deliveries. He took one day off.

To reach his second-floor bedsit in Beijing’s north-eastern suburbs, he trudges through dimly lit alleyways that wind through a chengzhongcun, one of the city’s low-rise villages that is densely packed with migrant workers from regional China.

“There are thousands of people [living here],” says Mu, 49, perched on the edge of his bed. “Most of them are delivery drivers.”

As with many migrant workers, his wife and children stayed behind in their home town – in his case, in Hebei province. When his construction business failed, he had few options but to find temporary work in the gig economy.

“For the sake of family, I just have to keep working,” he says. “To be honest, I’m illiterate and unskilled. I can only earn money through hard labour.”

Windowless and no more than two metres wide, Mu’s room fits just a mattress, a small desk and a bookshelf. Hanging from a hook on the wall is the distinctive fluoro-green jacket worn by riders for Xiaoxiang (Little Elephant in English), a supermarket platform owned by Chinese food delivery giant Meituan.

Along with the one he is wearing, it’s one of the few possessions he has here.

Mu is one of more than 10 million working as food delivery drivers across China. The industry has absorbed not just migrant workers fleeing the regions for better pay, but millions of university graduates struggling to find work while youth unemployment is at 17 per cent.

The gig economy has exploded in China since COVID-19, and rampant demand for the delivery of takeaway and groceries within the hour has become an ingrained feature of daily life in big cities – much more so than in Australia.

Beijing’s heavily trafficked roads are peppered with riders in high-vis delivery platform uniforms, while it’s common to see their e-bikes banked up outside restaurants as riders run through shopping centres and food courts to collect meals.

For many, the job offers flexibility and comparatively good pay compared with what they could earn