Qingshan Investment Research Center Preface
The total number of registered drivers on ride-hailing platforms has exceeded 100 million, with over 20,000 new drivers registering every day, and various regions have successively announced saturation; food delivery riders also see over 20,000 new registrations daily; news of layoffs at major tech companies, true or false, has caused widespread anxiety; college students are delaying graduation, unwilling to leave campus... "Employment" has become a sensitive word, and definitions of new terms like "flexible employment" and "slow employment" frequently top the hot searches. We attempt to understand the reasons behind these phenomena and see what is really happening in this era. After peeling back the layers, aside from commonly cited factors like "international situation" and "pandemic," "platforms" stand out as a prominent protagonist. Entering the platform world, we find its influence has become a backbone of economic development, and behind this are hundreds of millions of workers who rely on platforms for their livelihoods. They cannot be simply defined, nor do they fit into past categories of labor division. Among them are highly educated and intelligent individuals, those doing basic piecework, and others who are widely followed and attract attention. We collectively call them "platform workers."
Who Are Platform Workers?
Definition of Platform Workers
Workers = Labor for remuneration + Not owning means of production
Labor for remuneration: The key point of the definition of a worker is "exchanging labor for income," hence the terms "worker" or "labor." In socio-economic concepts, workers refer to the "proletariat." Unlike those who earn through assets such as rent or stock appreciation, workers rely on labor for income. Different job titles merely describe the mode of labor in different industries, such as farmers, programmers, delivery riders, or doctors, teachers, restaurant servers, and game streamers. Today, it is biased to think of workers only as factory laborers. Platforms have streamlined, standardized, and digitized every job in complex industrial chains. For example, food delivery riders actually play the role of a fixed link in a new assembly line. This industrialized way of working is an intuitive reason to call this group workers, but it is not the fundamental reason. Hired farm laborers are essentially workers; the nature of a worker's identity is unrelated to the industry or whether the labor is mental or physical.
Capital, Vol. 1: "The free worker, here 'free' has a double meaning: on one hand, the worker is a free person, distinct from slaves and serfs, able to dispose of their labor power as their own commodity; on the other hand, they have no other commodity to sell, free from all possessions."
Not owning means of production: With technological development and the use of machinery, the mode of production has advanced, and the means of production have also changed. In agriculture, the means of production is land; the landlord owns the land, and the farmer sells labor. After the Industrial Revolution, the means of production changed, and the term "worker" became the most widespread expression for the proletariat. When the electrical revolution, information technology revolution, and even today's AI revolution occurred, the means of production and modes of production changed dramatically. Industries became more developed and diverse, many new occupations emerged, and the essence of the worker has gradually been blurred and neglected. A worker is someone who must combine with the means of production for their labor power to realize value. A driver without a taxi is only a taxi driver in concept; only when driving a taxi does their labor power create value. So, is a ride-hailing driver who leases or even buys a car today a worker? Still yes, because the platform itself has become the system or tool that drivers must rely on to realize the value of their labor. The platform's connectivity function is precisely the core "means of production" of the new era. Just as a screw worker with their own wrench, a programmer with a computer, or a photographer with a camera is still a worker today because they do not own the core means of production.
Capital, Vol. 1: "In the automatic factory, a division of labor reappears... Besides the two main classes of workers—those who operate the machines and their mere attendants—there are a few who are employed in checking and regularly repairing the whole machinery, such as engineers, mechanics, joiners, etc. This is a higher class of workers, partly with scientific knowledge and partly with handicraft skill."
Receiving labor remuneration and not owning the means of production are the basic elements of a worker. Another simpler way to judge is that unemployment is a disaster unique to the working class. As long as we are experiencing unemployment or anxious about it, we are all workers.
Overview of Main Types of Platform Workers
In China, the population fitting the concept of platform workers exceeds 200 million. The past decade has seen China's GDP growth fall below 8% and continue to slow, yet the unemployment rate has remained relatively stable. This is because it has also been a decade of rapid platform penetration into various fields and industries of economic and social development, continuously restructuring production, distribution, exchange, and consumption, and promoting the reallocation of factors. The number of platform workers is large, and this group has become the mainstay of employment. Understanding the living conditions of platform workers and studying the evolution of their structure is of great value from both production and consumption perspectives.
From the perspective of their relationship with platforms, platform workers are mainly divided into three categories:
- Those who complete the construction, operation, and promotion of platforms, such as programmers and e-commerce operations staff. They are generally employed full-time by the platform.
- Those who, according to platform rules and using platform tools, accept orders to complete work, such as ride-hailing drivers and food delivery riders. They are numerous and have flexible labor relations.
- Those who use platforms to attract traffic and complete services, such as influencers and online photographers. They often appear as part-time workers or independent contractors, with flexible working methods.
We selected six occupations that are highly visible and have significant social impact to showcase the contributions and individual struggles of platform workers. Common reports and articles typically use three different metrics for industry population counts, with numbers decreasing in order:
- Registered: The number of accounts registered on the platform, indicating how many people have attempted to become such platform workers. For example, Didi has a total of 70 million registered drivers.
- Worked: Those who have activated their accounts within a period, indicating how many have actually done the work at least once. For example, Meituan had 6.24 million riders who earned income last year.
- Regularly engaged: Those who work in this occupation year-round, relying on it as their main source of income, such as those who use their accounts frequently and are active on the front lines, showing how many are stably working rather than trying it out. For example, the postal system counts about 2.52 million front-line couriers.
This article uses the third metric for counting platform workers in major occupations.
Truck Drivers
What you may know: Truck drivers are the largest group among platform workers, supporting the world's largest freight system. As the main contributors to China's freight logistics, the number of truck drivers once exceeded 30 million. Before platforms emerged, this occupation had long existed. We consider truck drivers as platform workers because platforms have greatly changed the way freight work is done and improved efficiency. Today, truck drivers are fully "connected" and have become a group dependent on platforms. There are over 2,500 freight platforms nationwide. 76% of truck drivers have used freight internet platforms, with nearly 30% getting most of their cargo from platforms, and over 70% getting more than half of their cargo from platforms. In 2022, road freight volume was 37.1 billion tons, with a freight turnover of 6.9 trillion ton-kilometers. Truck drivers complete the highest volume of road transport among all freight channels (road, rail, water, air), accounting for the vast majority. During the pandemic, we deeply realized that a week-long or even day-long stoppage would have a huge impact. For hospitals to have medicine, supermarkets to have goods, and garbage not to pile up, and for residents' lives and corporate production to run normally, the continuous work of truck drivers is indispensable.
What you may not know: Truck drivers once enjoyed the saying, "When the engine roars, gold pours in; when the wheels turn, money strings along." But the difficulties then were: relying entirely on paper maps, waiting for someone to pick you up at destinations, entering cities only at midnight, risking theft of cargo and fuel, and facing road bandits who could take lives. Now platforms bring safety and more channels for cargo. For a trip, fuel is the biggest expense. Whether the return trip is empty determines if the trip is profitable or a wasted effort. Platform development has brought a rapid increase in logistics demand and stable orders. Car companies' "zero down payment" loan policies have promoted the proliferation of trucks. In 2022, 62% of truck drivers believed that vehicle oversupply led to low-price competition. The pressure of debt repayment from loans also drives truck drivers to work overtime. As environmental standards rise, truck lifespans have shortened from 15 years to about 7 years, invisibly increasing the cost of purchasing trucks, forcing drivers to extend working hours and causing widespread fatigue driving. Over 70% of truck drivers have education at junior high school level or below, with only 0.6% having a bachelor's degree or higher. Rural hukou accounts for 80%, and they often bring their families along, with wives and children traveling year-round. In 2022, the proportion of female truck drivers increased significantly, tripling year-on-year, but still only 2%.
In this industry, although 98% are male, the best arrangement is when the "truck wife" can also drive. A wife with an A-class license switches with the driver every 4 hours, so the person rests but the truck doesn't, avoiding mandatory rest periods, and meals are cooked on the road. A typical trip lasts 10-15 days, with eating and sleeping in the truck; the whole family's work and life are in the vehicle. Couples are more efficient and earn more than single drivers. With company on the long road, both hardship and happiness are on the way, in the cramped cab of the truck.
Food Delivery Riders
What you may know: Food delivery may be an urban feature, but riders are an important absorber of rural labor. Over 80% of Meituan riders come from county towns and villages. Food is the first necessity. China's catering industry earns over 4 trillion yuan annually, with the vast majority provided by small eateries full of life. Platform support for food delivery gives small shops better survival space. In 2022, small shops with single-store investments of 100,000-200,000 yuan grew 47.6% year-on-year. Food delivery started with catering but now serves more industries. Meituan has over 10,000 24-hour pharmacies serving 20 million users. There are nearly 300,000 convenience stores and small supermarkets related to instant retail. During the pandemic, it supported supply, covering 30 provincial regions and 663 cities and counties.
What you may not know: As a job that requires instant order acceptance and completing the process of picking up food from merchants and delivering to customers every dozen or so minutes, riders have a profound understanding of the new term "algorithm." To adapt to algorithms, riders have put on a pair of glasses to re-see the world. For example, the hardest part is not finding the residential complex, but where to park the e-bike outside, how to find the building once inside, and whom to ask. For example, riding doesn't have the problem of not being able to see navigation because you can't rely on looking; routes must be memorized. For example, they remember the habits of merchants and customers, since ordering food is addictive. For example, milk tea shops are the best—many orders and easy to deliver, unlike noodles that clump or cakes that spill. For example, Heytea, Naixue, and Starbucks have separate pricing, and specializing in delivering for these big names is profitable. But most importantly, always wear a helmet and never click "deliver early." One saves your life and the platform's life in critical moments; the other ensures no customer complaint escalates, also saving the platform. After adapting to the rules, all actions are clearly directed, which is the rider's foundation for survival. A single parameter adjustment by the platform affects the entire work state. When you learn to get along with rules and algorithms, the time you can squeeze from details directly translates into fewer fines and more rewards and subsidies. And for platform workers taking orders, relying on the base unit price won't make money; rewards and subsidies are the main income. The biggest income boost comes from delivering multiple orders at once. Newbies in the first half month shouldn't expect much; a dozen or so orders a day is good. The top riders on the daily station leaderboard with over 100 orders achieve this by having nearly 10 orders in hand at all times. Skilled workers at this level work fewer hours a day than ride-hailing drivers and have fixed rest times. The physical toll of food delivery is actually less than that of most service workers and blue-collar workers. But no matter how cold or hot, wind or rain, you have to deliver. And delivery requires constant running; elevators can't be waited for. Therefore, although the barrier to entry is low and there's almost no difficulty, at delivery stations you still see a few people who can't stick it out and leave after a few days. Today, the accident insurance that many care about is actually quite comprehensive. But if a fall doesn't break bones and only causes minor bleeding, riders often choose between earning money and wasting time at the hospital, opting for the former. After all, if treatment costs less than 300 yuan, insurance doesn't reimburse.
Ride-Hailing Drivers
What you may know: In 2022, newly issued ride-hailing driver licenses increased by 32.6% year-on-year, and in 2023, the daily number of new ride-hailing drivers has grown nearly fivefold compared to 2022. Ride-hailing driving has become one of the fastest-growing industries for employment. About 7 million drivers are active daily, supporting about 1.4 billion rides per month nationwide. In the decade since ride-hailing emerged, it has created a larger urban passenger transport market than taxis. In the first five months of this year, officially counted legal ride-hailing orders reached 70% of taxi orders. Based on more frontline data, ride-hailing orders now account for at least 60% of the entire taxi-hailing market.
Compared to buses, subways, and light rail, taking a taxi is relatively convenient but has issues like higher prices, service attitudes, and potential detours. The entry of ride-hailing, besides helping with capacity and passenger numbers, has forced the taxi industry to improve. On one hand, ride-hailing's instant ordering and system dispatch save matching and waiting time; on the other, full digitalization and cloud-based tracking make routes and prices transparent. Ride-hailing hasn't completely replaced taxis but has improved the overall efficiency and service quality of the instant travel market. As a more convenient option, ride-hailing has expanded travel possibilities. Moreover, it has created services like carpooling and ride-sharing that didn't exist before. From initially being outside industry regulation to gradually being incorporated into the regulatory system and becoming standardized, ride-hailing, as a typical industry, has completed the process of platform-policy negotiation in the sharing economy experiment, ultimately benefiting consumer experience.
What you may not know: Compared to other platform workers, high pay and dignity were once important labels for ride-hailing drivers. Although it's also a job where you accept orders online and immediately hit the road, sitting in a four-wheeled car gives a sense of ease rather than constant running. Moreover, during the platform wars, daily subsidies could reach 40 million yuan. Monthly income over 10,000 yuan was once the baseline. White-collar workers and car owners turned to ride-hailing driving, both for novelty and real money. But now, earning nearly 10,000 yuan a month may be rare. Regardless of city tier, drivers still working take hardly a day off a month, driving over a dozen hours a day, exceeding 996 intensity. Yet they often take home only a few thousand yuan, and hourly wages are lower than factory screw-tightening. More intuitively, they have to work extra hours while their bodies struggle; after 10 hours, they just want to go home. 39% of drivers have cervical spondylosis, and stomach issues, frozen shoulder, lumbar disc herniation, obesity, gastrointestinal disorders, and cholecystitis are common occupational diseases. Irregular eating, strong tea, and smoking are common states. Since 2023, ride-hailing driving has become an especially competitive destination for platform workers. Countless white-collar workers, when considering platform jobs as a "fallback" from the workplace, first choose the seemingly ideal ride-hailing driver role, only to find the market crowded with newcomers and shrinking. The situation of hundreds of drivers competing for one order was unimaginable before but is now daily. Even local governments have issued warnings advising caution. Officially counted fully licensed ride-hailing vehicles are now more than double two years ago. The influx of newcomers gradually gets entangled with salary and health issues and may consider leaving. Whether to break this cycle is a dilemma for every driver. As "urban nomads" roaming the city, ride-hailing drivers' last bit of stubborn "dignity" is solidified in the "R Star" hanging in their cars—an orange car air freshener with black "R☆" printed on it. Even though many may not know or care, this symbol represents the vigilante racers of Los Santos in America and the cowboys riding horses on the Texas plains.
Programmers
What you may know: The infrastructure work of Chinese internet platforms supported by programmers has allowed almost all Chinese people to handle the vast majority of consumption and life online, including work, entertainment, communication, transactions, finance, and even healthcare and education. In surveys of non-internet users, the biggest inconvenience is that many scenarios require online payment, making cashless transactions difficult. Facebook has a famous saying: "CODE WINS ARGUMENTS." The direct output of programmers' work is lines of code in various programming languages. In programmers' work, data processing and system architecture are the most distinctive features and the most needed advanced skills of the platform era. This is because internet platforms have two major characteristics compared to traditional computer industries: big data and high concurrency. ByteDance processed 200 trillion bytes of data daily in 2016, and five years later, that number became 15 billion billion bytes, a 7,500-fold increase. Taobao's Double 11 peak concurrency can reach 583,000 orders per second. The mutual promotion of demand and supply in these areas further stimulates platform R&D and accumulation in cloud computing, cloud storage, chips, multimodal large models, and artificial intelligence.
What you may not know: Programmers create the endless internet world. Does this byte world have weight? UC Berkeley computer scientist John D. Kubiatowicz stated that stored bytes have weight. Flash memory distinguishes 0s and 1s by capturing electrons; when the number of electrons is constant, captured (stored) electrons gain higher energy levels, thus increasing mass. A byte weighs about 1 attogram, or 1/10^30 of a gram. The internet currently holds about 100 zettabytes (10^23 bytes) of data, which is 1/10^7 of a gram. This is equivalent to the weight of 40 human cells, 1/4000 of a hair strand, and slightly smaller than a speck of dust. A speck of dust contains the entire internet world. But 95% of all data produced in human civilization comes from the past decade (5 ZB in 2013). In the future, as data becomes an explosively growing asset, platforms may become heavier, both virtually and physically. How popular and prestigious programming-related majors are is known to every middle school parent and child. Jokes or accusations about baldness, plaid shirts, high IQ and low EQ have never truly hurt this group's confidence—because programmers remain among the highest earners. Even without becoming top industry leaders, diligent grassroots and mid-level practitioners can achieve annual salaries of hundreds of thousands to millions shortly after graduation. To date, domestic programmers are still predominantly young males. Males account for over 91%, far exceeding the global level (73%); those under 35 account for over 77%, also exceeding the global level (70%). The joke that "male programmers are sought after in blind dates because they 'earn a lot but die early'" seems to offend everyone, but under the high-salary persona, no one cares. Growth can mask all problems. When platform infrastructure was rapidly expanding, from leaving work late to 996, programmers were happy to eat their "youth rice." Tired but with early home and car ownership and high consumption, programmers have always been confident, and the intellectual persona makes this confidence seem not blind. There's a curious close connection between real estate agents who must wear suits and ties and programmers who dress casually in plaid shirts. Over the past decade, in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou where major internet companies are located, countless top real estate agents owe their success to programmers, especially when platforms go public and options are cashed in. The "divine properties" on maps are built around factories, but these factories are internet giants. Programmers self-deprecatingly call themselves "code farmers" and their workplaces "factories," but to real estate agents, these jokes sound like money. When someone with plaid shirts, glasses, thinning hair, and a quiet, straightforward manner comes to view a house, agents often welcome them with open arms. Among platform workers, programmers are the highest-paid occupation, but it's also the most basic work. However, this job requires continuous learning of new knowledge. Rapid technological iteration coincides with sub-health. Programming technology changes every moment, and programmers must constantly follow industry developments or risk falling behind. The saturated workload during work hours often squeezes out learning time, forcing them to study on their own time. A survey by Guangming Daily shows that programmers generally lack leisure time, with personal rest constantly squeezed by work, bearing dual pressure on body and mind. Irregular schedules, little exercise, and frequent takeout meals lead many programmers to have multiple health alarms at a young age, with cervical spondylosis, lumbar muscle strain, overweight, insomnia, and hair loss being common topics. Respondents said: "My body has reached its limit, but I can't stop. It's like a spinning top; I have to keep whipping myself to keep going."
Quiz—Are you suited to be a programmer? Q: Wife calls husband: "On your way home, buy a pound of buns. If you see someone selling watermelons, buy one." That night, the husband comes home with only one bun. Why? A: Because he saw someone selling watermelons.
Programmers' main work revolves around data, algorithms, and logic. They use different languages, each with its own specialty, but all designed to communicate with machines. When AI rises and human language becomes machine language, the highest-paid profession suddenly feels the most direct crisis. And when economic growth loosens, mortgages and high consumption habits are hard to loosen, programmers begin to become the largest "lost generation." After all, the pain of loss is far greater than never having had.
Influencers
What you may know: If everyone who posts content counts as an influencer, the number is in the hundreds of millions. On Douyin alone, broad influencers exceed 100 million. Here we follow Douyin's official definition of influencers—creators with over 10,000 followers. Under this definition, and since influencers generally operate across multiple platforms, rarely focusing on just one, we estimate based on creator numbers across platforms that the total number of influencers nationwide is around 5 million. These influencers promote the motivation and possibility of completing transactions for various products and services online. In 2022, among the top-selling accounts in various industries on Douyin, influencers accounted for 65.2%, surpassing brand stores as the main sales force. Brands collaborating with more influencers is a major trend; the number of brands with fewer than 10 influencer partnerships decreased, while those with over 100, 500, 1000, and 2000 partnerships grew significantly. Compared to "internet celebrities," today's "internet influencers" are also called KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) or KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers), because besides having many followers ("red"), they are relatively professional and provide opinions with vertical knowledge and ability ("expert"). Whatever they're called, their essence is to give opinions, lead views, and influence consumer cognition through coverage of enough followers. Consumers can remember limited information; as product supply becomes abundant, "brands" emerge. As brands multiply, KOLs increasingly serve as selectors and introducers. Now KOLs are abundant, and KOCs are growing because they offer more trust. Influencers are not just tools for brand marketing. The content they create makes these platforms new search engines and encyclopedias of life hacks. Knowledge popularization is also an increasingly important area for influencers. Today's consumers can get everything from the vast information online, but they are also disturbed by the noise of massive information. Influencers help consumers "outsource" part of the process of learning and understanding the world, ultimately helping users simply "choose." This process of "filtering choices" and "collectively expressing" the choices of countless followers affects consumers not only in shopping "seeding" but also deeply penetrates all aspects of life. What judgments and choices are we making today that are not influenced by influencers?
We joke about being "hijacked by consumerism" when we "chop hands," but various news events, social hot topics, opinions on education, job hunting, marriage, family, entrepreneurship, and finance, and even the shaping of worldviews and the pursuit of life's meaning—these subtle influences from various influencers are far more profound than buying something. Just take short videos: currently, people watch an average of 2.5 hours per day. Excluding those swiped away in a second or two, roughly every 15 seconds we are told a news item or fed an opinion; daily, we are guided by influencers' views and information over 600 times. We are pulled in various directions by infinite content, forming "camps," with countless topics and oppositions created, and we are swept along actively or passively. From a sociological perspective, the concentration of attention, output of influence, and monetization after consumer recognition form a closed loop where influencers exert influence on society and benefit in return. Here, communication power, like a loudspeaker, is an important parameter, and the pursuit of this parameter explains why influencer content on the internet is increasingly bizarre. Whether it's the classic consumer theory model AIDMA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory, Action) or the internet user lifecycle model AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral), both are confirmed by the ubiquitous influence of influencers today. Compared to other platform workers, influencers may be the most widely distributed, with no geographical or urban-rural restrictions. Whether it's agricultural products in fields, impoverished households in deep mountains, wonders of the sky and sea, or the lives of classes you've never touched, influencers can show us all. The emergence of influencers is a kind of information equalization and a challenge to traditional communication studies. After all, communication studies as an independent social science only emerged after World War II, initially for analyzing U.S. presidential elections and reflecting on Nazism, focusing on centralized media like print, TV, and radio. On the basis of this traditional "celebrity culture," American sociologist Lazarsfeld's two-step flow model can be seen as an essential explanation of the value of influencers: mass communication increasingly cannot directly affect individuals but needs "opinion leaders" as "thought gatekeepers" for small groups to digest, diffuse, and emphasize. The opposite of approval is not opposition but silence. As decentralized voices, influencers transmit views to small groups, then break their silence, allowing individuals to dare to express approval. This is the true significance of influencers in society.
What you may not know: As platform workers facing consumers directly, influencers have the highest income ceiling due to their position in the industry chain. A small number earn tens of millions or hundreds of millions annually; more, though with fewer followers, can still get ads. Platform recommendation algorithms and brand marketing strategies mean influencers don't need extremely high follower counts to make money. But behind the money are many problems. The game between individual influencers and companies is eternal and has no perfect solution. Platforms support individual development, but the significance of guilds and MCNs is ambiguous. Those with traffic don't need companies; those without are part of companies' diversified investments. A company signs a hundred, and three or five become popular; they make money from those few. What they're doing is not incubation but angel investing. In industry communities serving influencers, the most common need and discussion is influencers consulting about contract termination. Another difficult issue is that faces living in front of cameras cannot escape appearance anxiety. Influencers living in phone filters create a rift between the filtered self and the real self. Many women become beauty bloggers because commercial value is determined from the first day they create content: "entering the right industry" is most important. Choice is more important than effort; game bloggers and comedy bloggers have more traffic but find it hard to make money. Although not all influencers rely on their looks for a youth job, the underlying problem is that whatever you rely on for a living, you have to keep investing more in that direction, throwing in your body, time, and money. No one knows when to stop for the best balance. More often, you want to invest but don't know how. As a group that creates content to attract traffic and then monetizes it, influencers' long-term mental state deserves attention because traffic is the most addictive drug.
Couriers
What you may know: Before platforms emerged, the Chinese market was vast and deep. Over the past decade, China's express delivery volume has grown year after year, from less than 10 billion parcels to over 100 billion, accounting for 60% of global business volume, firmly ranking first in the world. The industry scale exceeds that of China State Railway Group and the civil aviation industry. Behind these flowing parcels are commodities; the express delivery infrastructure supports 14 trillion yuan in annual online retail sales. The express industry is still growing rapidly, with annual increments alone equivalent to the total annual volume of the United States. Couriers support not only daily "buy buy buy" but also clothes and books donated to mountainous areas, college admission notices sent to students, emergency medicines, and even life-saving organs.
What you may not know: As the last mile of online retail, couriers inevitably face various absurd situations due to direct contact with consumers. Missing items after unpacking lead to suspicion of theft; if they don't get along with stations or customers or encounter difficult ones, they'd rather be complained about and fined than go to the door; sometimes the recipient is unaware or unwilling to receive, and after climbing many floors with heavy items, they find the door closed; sometimes the door is opened by a barking pet, not a person. However, as long as the parcel isn't alive and doesn't get damaged midway, these are acceptable minor issues. A deputy director of the State Post Bureau recently stated in a speech that China's express industry has grown more than tenfold in the past decade, but the number of couriers has actually declined. In the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's list of the 100 most "in-demand" occupations in the fourth quarter of 2022, couriers ranked third. The demand growth in the express industry is self-evident, but why hasn't the number of couriers increased? Couriers have always been in short supply. Both involve running orders, but ride-hailing drivers and food delivery have immediacy, while express delivery does not. Express delivery is like a slowed-down food delivery rider without time limits. Couriers often take on temporary help duties for residents, fulfilling the home needs of the elderly and lonely. A report earlier this year said consumers generally regard couriers as "burden bearers in the pandemic" and "people around them" closely related to their lives. Couriers actually do many things beyond their duties, just like firefighters. Couriers putting out fires is no longer an isolated news story; some express companies even have fire trucks. Because they often cover surrounding office buildings and residential areas, they are familiar with residents and frequently visit, and consumers are happy to maintain good relations with couriers. But couriers can't slow down. Although not every order has a time limit like food delivery, couriers also have a daily quota of deliveries to complete. To avoid fines, couriers' working hours far exceed those of food delivery riders, because a fine is equivalent to delivering 100-200 orders for free, potentially ruining a day's hard work. The battle among e-commerce platforms for market share continues, and new and old express companies are also competing on price; consumers applaud, but couriers' incomes are increasingly meager. Behind the year-round free shipping are couriers who work almost year-round without rest. After midnight on various e-commerce promotional festivals, many other positions breathe a sigh of relief, but couriers are just starting the hardest final link. China is vast, and in countless small villages and towns, couriers cannot ride bikes and must deliver on foot; walking 40,000 steps a day may be the limit for ordinary people, but it's their daily routine. The annual turnover rate for couriers is over 70%, with 20% of couriers switching to food delivery. Many food delivery riders must first work as couriers in the area for a few years to gain a deep understanding of the terrain and buildings; express delivery becomes a stepping stone to food delivery. For those motivated to earn more to support their families, the end point for couriers is often becoming food delivery riders. Couriers are decreasing, but parcels continue to increase. Currently, 20 million tons of express waste are generated annually, with a recovery rate of less than 20%. The largest portion, cardboard boxes, is mostly sold cheaply for pulp, while plastics are almost entirely discarded and unrecyclable. How can the hundreds of billions of parcels be better circulated? This is also a problem worth exploring, with a value of hundreds of billions.
Structural Changes in Platform Workers
General Evolution Patterns of Worker Structures In China's traditional worker structure, the largest group is "manufacturing," followed by "construction." In these two main industries, there are common patterns in worker structure evolution: early on, there is demand for infrastructure construction jobs; after infrastructure is perfected, more employment demand exists in building more advanced and complex content on top of or within the infrastructure, i.e., advanced and diversified needs after basic needs are met. In manufacturing, the proportion of workers in basic needs (food and beverage, clothing, furniture) has been declining. Meanwhile, the number of workers in transport equipment (mainly automobiles), equipment (mainly advanced industrial equipment), electrical machinery and apparatus, and computer/communication/other electronic equipment manufacturing has been rising. This reflects the pattern of worker structure changes in the manufacturing of industrial equipment and consumer products as market demand changes. In construction, after the commercial housing market emerged, the absolute number of workers in the industry increased significantly. This reflects the industry's initial demand for basic construction workers. Also, from the specific structure of construction workers, it can be seen that as the industry develops, the proportion of basic construction workers declines rapidly, while the proportion of installation, decoration, and other needs in real estate continues to rise. When enough houses are built on the land, filling them with content, commercial operation, and marketing becomes the main structural demand. This is also evident from the significant changes in the employed population in real estate (referring to sales services, not construction) and leasing services.
History and Evolution Progress of Platform Workers Similar to the general evolution patterns above, the overall structure of platform workers has been changing over the past three decades of platform development. Currently, as platforms themselves have developed to a specific stage, the evolution progress of platform workers has reached a critical juncture. Internet platforms began to brew at the turn of the century, initially with value only in information transmission, with core revenue from advertising. During the process of digitizing various offline entities, the internet was a subset of "media." In the internet industry, the core jobs were information gathering and editing, and advertising sales. As the internet demonstrated its efficiency in information transmission in time and space, more and more physical industries began to be affected and penetrated. BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), as the first-generation giants, began to show the key value of "platforms": bilateral network effects. Whether in information transmission, commodity retail, or social networking, platforms rapidly developed and even monopolized due to bilateral network effects, deeply influencing every consumer. At this time, platform workers were mainly those employed full-time by platforms, completing the construction of platforms as future infrastructure. Programmers became the most important platform workers, starting to "build houses" on the virtual land of the internet, constructing fortified cities. Computer, IT, software, and other programming-related majors became the most popular university majors. We can use real estate as an analogy to help understand the major categories of platform workers. When internet platforms in various fields had basically divided their territories, we can see a significant increase in operations and sales positions, becoming as numerous as programmers in internet companies. The development of the internet began to enter a more stable state. But then, mobile internet arrived. Over the past fifteen years, as the internet gradually moved toward mobile internet, the digital economy has deepened from virtual to real. Platforms can influence and carry more and more industrial forms, and their binding with the real economy is getting deeper. In this process, on one hand, programmers, operations, and sales saw new demand again, and a new round of expansion involved a large number of platform workers. On the other hand, mobile internet platforms created two new types of platform workers: those who rely on platforms to accept orders, such as ride-hailing drivers and food delivery riders, and service providers who use platforms to attract traffic. Order-taking platform workers are the group that has grown the fastest from scratch over the past fifteen years and is most closely related to ordinary consumers. Platform workers solved the logistics experience problem of commodity factors, truly achieving mutual success with platforms, continuously reducing the proportion of total logistics costs to GDP, now below 15%, which releases economic vitality and innovation opportunities. Only when "everyone can ship" can "everyone sell"; only with "half-hour delivery" can purchases become more frequent and convenient. E-commerce live streaming, short video seeding, near-field retail, and pure delivery catering—new tracks are emerging endlessly. This is the true value of mobile internet and the beginning of the massive emergence and variety of platform workers. Evolving to today, we are at a critical node: platform infrastructure has basically reached its peak. This is the direct reason for layoffs of programmers and operations staff and young people's difficulty finding jobs, and also the root cause of saturation in "fallback" jobs like food delivery riders and ride-hailing drivers. But the overall value of platforms is far from peaking. After the platform software and hardware systems are fully built, the structural focus of platform workers is shifting toward service providers who use platforms to attract traffic. Just as after land acquisition and house building are completed, shopping centers are built, and restaurants, retail, and cinemas have moved in. New types of service positions will emerge. The information interaction, AI intelligence, and offline delivery infrastructure that platforms have completed will become the soil for creating new demand and supply. In recent years, we have seen a large number of newly born long-tail occupations. They all meet needs that did not exist before, were not refined, and have no established industry practitioners. After new demands are discovered, using platforms as tools and traffic entrances, new practitioners can realize supply. In 2022, Tencent's digital ecosystem drove 147 new occupations. With the deepening of digitalization in the life services industry, digital operations specialists, as a new occupation, have a demand of about 4 million on Meituan alone. Relying on platforms, new positions continue to emerge, matching new demand and supply, and achieving new growth flywheels. For example, platform demand for content has given rise to new content scriptwriters. For example, on platforms, any hobby can be respected and like-minded people found, leading to the emergence of doll doctors who repair time and memories. For example, various new farmers have emerged due to long-term and grand industrial development themes like platform-assisted agriculture. In addition to the mainstream platform workers already known to the public, we have also sorted out over a hundred dazzling "new platform workers." You will see various niche positions that haven't yet become mainstream, but you may find one that interests you or even becomes your future livelihood.
Can Platforms Accommodate More Workers?
Note: 1. ∝ is a mathematical symbol indicating proportionality, e.g., y ∝ x means y is proportional to x. 2. The degree of intelligence refers to the share of non-human labor (machines, AI, etc.) in the overall supply of goods and services, ranging from 0 to 100%. 3. Total national time is a function of total population, population penetration rate, and the weighted attention of each consumer. 4. The time value per user depends on what users do on the platform. As intelligence increases, users can theoretically fulfill more needs.
First, look at platform scale. Internet platforms, as consumer-side applications integrating information technology, rely on the efficient "flow" of information as the basis and starting point of all value. The term "traffic" is now widely known. The value of a platform lies in the acquisition and distribution of traffic, and what new supply-demand matches, industrial structures, and market value can be generated on top of traffic. "Total national time" is traffic itself. It is related to the number of internet platform users and the attention each user spends on various content on internet platforms. Over the past three decades, the "total national time" obtained by internet platforms has basically peaked, which is a widely recognized reality. Total population and population penetration rate have no room for growth. But the time value per user is still an area to work on. In real estate, when land acquisition and house building ended, the employment dividend for construction workers disappeared. But creating commercial content in real estate becomes new value. Creativity, operations, and new business models are ways to keep the real estate industry scale rising. For example, residential areas become elderly care communities, business districts become trendy markets, and shopping centers become youth-oriented activity complexes. Similarly, when platforms complete infrastructure and product penetration, the dividend for code writers and operations staff disappears. But those who create new supply and demand value within the limited traffic on the internet will also bring new platform scale, thus driving new employment. The many new platform workers mentioned earlier are the beginning of various possibilities for new supply-demand matches based on platforms. Previously ignored people can be seen. Ignored demands can be met by supply, and ignored supply can create demand. The increase in intelligence and the creation of demand diversity both affect the time value per user. And these two also promote each other. On one hand, AI and other technologies continue to advance, and the rise in intelligence allows more demands to be met by supply. Internet platforms rely on the infinite content provided by users to achieve huge "total national time." We have already seen AI redefining content generation and doing more things every day. On the other hand, we also need to continuously create more diverse and fresh demands. Technological progress is endless, intended to improve efficiency and benefit humanity, but to avoid overcapacity and make technological development valuable, a prerequisite is needed: products have a market, and services have demand. Relying on platforms, we are already seeing increasingly developed diversity in goods and services, shifting from purely demanding efficiency and cost-effectiveness to more possibilities. The various long-tail new occupations emerging are evidence. In the future, machines will also do better in diverse supply. At that time, humans won't compete with machines on efficiency but will provide demand and direct what machines should do.
Then look at employment capacity. The higher the degree of intelligence, the smaller the share of employment capacity that platforms can support for human labor. The World Economic Forum report mentions that by 2025, machines will cover 52% of global work share. Technological explosions represented by AI have always challenged human value. Fortunately, we have seen that the rise in intelligence itself also brings growth in platform scale on the right side of the equation. The substitution and creation effects of technological development on employment is a long-debated topic without a quantitative answer. What we can think about is how to make technology a tool for human well-being. When the AI wind rises, humans should be their own helmsmen, guiding the direction of the vehicle. Human thought advancing together with technology, using the increase in intelligence to create more demand diversity, may be a long-term solution. Giving machines goals is humanity's newest and final value, and the ultimate direction for solving employment in the future.
Platforms still have employment capacity, but the structure has changed. Platforms have accumulated for thirty years, and the employment positions they can solve are like a reservoir, with the structure of the water pool rapidly changing. To date, platforms have completed basic underlying construction and are beginning to promote and stimulate the generation of more services and content. Concentrated unemployment in some industries and more industries poised for growth are the nodes we are experiencing now. In the future, as intelligence continues to improve, data, as the most important resource factor, will be more centrally generated and utilized by platforms. Platforms will inevitably become larger and stronger, so overall they can accommodate more platform workers. Long-tail occupations are gradually becoming mainstream in the minds of young people. When some pools in the big reservoir shrink but more pools appear, those concerned about employment should find their place.
Why Does It Feel Like Everyone Is Unemployed?
On one hand, this "feeling" that everyone is unemployed may itself come from platforms, which amplify our subjective psychological perception of objective unemployment issues. This might be a magic of algorithms that can guide and focus topics. On the other hand, as mentioned above, platforms are undergoing structural changes in job types. This change brings about the compression of old job positions while new jobs are not yet known to the broad workforce. In the future, platforms can indeed accommodate more workers relative to other industries, but in the past few years and even now, there has indeed been a large amount of structural unemployment among platform workers. This is an inevitable result of the overall job structure changes as platforms evolve to today. Platform development is bringing more long-tail new occupations. For employment, understanding the evolution patterns of platforms and fully utilizing platforms as tools may be an important means of career planning today.
Historical Contributions and Future Value of Platforms
During the pandemic, food delivery riders largely solved the problem of residents buying groceries and meals, and ride-hailing platforms organized fleets to transport medical staff. In the special three years, everyone personally felt the indispensable importance of platforms. From 2020 to 2022, the state's policy on the platform economy shifted from "strengthening regulation" to "implementing normalized regulation." In March this year, the government work report, when outlining the key tasks for 2023, pointed out "vigorously developing the digital economy, improving the level of normalized regulation, and supporting the development of the platform economy." Just after the Two Sessions, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized "supporting platform enterprises to make great strides in creating employment, expanding consumption, and international competition." In April, the State Administration for Market Regulation proposed five measures to guide internet platform enterprises toward openness, innovation, and empowerment, further clarifying the value and significance of platforms and support for them.
In the thirty years of internet platform development, "coincidentally," many other phenomena have also been occurring simultaneously. Platforms have already achieved many contributions and will continue to create value:
1. Undertaking the task of absorbing employment after the inflection point of pillar industries In the process of urbanization, homebuyers' spending became income for cement, building materials factories, and real estate sales, supporting the construction industry, a major employer. Urbanization attracted migrant workers to cities, but the growth rate of urban construction land has long been much higher than the growth rate of urban population. The accumulated urban permanent population exceeds the registered population by 260 million, most of whom are rural populations mainly composed of migrant workers and their families who have not settled. Internet platforms took over from real estate as new large-scale infrastructure, absorbing a large number of agricultural populations into employment, truly enabling healthy urbanization.
2. Realization and development of modern globalization Globalization once existed in the form of colonization and plunder, but after the world entered overall peace, industrial enterprises and organizations became the main body of globalization. The past thirty years have been both a time of emergence and penetration of large internet platforms and a period of rapid globalization of industries and enterprises. Some argue that the internet is not actually an industry and does not directly create value, but rather changes industrial structure and expands industrial scale. With platform development, production of products and services has further globalized division of labor, even creating value and exchanging at the individual rather than national industry level. Platforms have become an inseparable part of the reasons for global industrial scale growth.
3. Enabling the value of most people to be presented Platform development has brought unprecedented equalization of rights to humanity. In terms of ability and resources, a small elite far surpasses the vast majority of ordinary people. But every information transmission, opinion interaction, and content expression on the internet is a collective event that erases background differences. In a negative light, this is why cyber violence occurs; in a positive light, platforms can discover excellent opinions from those without a voice, and even if there is no applause nearby, they can find echoes from afar.
4. Supporting individual choices Platform development has made information flow faster, with a hundred schools of thought contending. The cultural concepts, psychological belonging, and value identification of every individual globally have become extremely generalized, with blurred boundaries. Without platforms, sexual minorities would not have so quickly evolved from "homosexual" to 97 types like LGBTQIACPKDGNFXUREW. Values are hard to judge in binary terms, but humanity is certainly moving further along the path of diversification.
5. Making passion a career Platforms provide diversity and possibility in demand and supply. This flywheel will continuously create new consumer markets, and these markets initially stem more from genuine passion. Platforms allow workers who don't want to be screws to do what they love, making passion for life part of work and life.
6. Platforms are the mother of AI (Artificial Intelligence) Platforms gave birth to and nurture AI. Without platform development, artificial intelligence would not have been born. On the eve of the birth of silicon-based life, nurturing AI may be the most important mission of platforms. The internet turned individual "computers" into "networked devices" as nodes, and mobile internet further amplified this network effect, collecting data on human thoughts and behaviors in daily work and life in every conceivable way. The "digital economy" brought by platforms has "datafied" everything. For example, the internet datafied massive photos and paintings, which is the beginning of AI learning to paint. When data density is high enough and updates fast enough, "big data" opens the path for AI to "learn" and gradually become stronger. Besides data, the traffic and capital gathered by platforms' network and scale effects also contribute to the foundation for AI large models. The hard work of the Chinese people has built the value of a vast platform worker base, and domestic internet platforms' ability to mobilize and concentrate social resources is a prerequisite for AI large model R&D. In this war over AI large models that cannot be lost from a human and national perspective, platforms are the initial soil and continuous nourishment.
Epilogue
In 2022, China's digital economy scale reached 50.2 trillion yuan, a nominal year-on-year growth of 10.3%, significantly higher than the nominal GDP growth rate for 11 consecutive years. The digital economy is not just a virtual economy; behind the online is the "real" of various offline aspects, and platforms are the core of the digital economy. As a new organizational form of productivity in the digital age, the platform economy has profoundly changed production and lifestyle, playing an increasingly important role in promoting industrial upgrading and optimizing resource allocation. Platforms have "hundred-billion subsidies" for the consumer side and "hundred-billion agricultural research" for the production side. Platform enterprises are not charities, but as market competitors, each with strategic plans based on their own corporate goals, they can develop sustainably within the law while competing, actually fulfilling better social responsibility, providing employment opportunities, and promoting overall positive externalities for social and economic development. In the upcoming era of AI+ everything, or even humans coexisting with robots, platforms, as a pioneering organizational structure and market entity, are irreplaceable for our country to not fall behind and pursue better development. The value and significance of platforms are largely realized by absorbing, integrating, and mobilizing platform workers. Every ordinary platform worker's daily hard work brings us the clothing, food, housing, and transportation behind our hundred-trillion GDP, abundant goods and services, safety and stability, and spiritual nourishment. Workers have always been the source of major social wealth. In this era where platforms are so important, platform workers are the cornerstone of society and the pillar of the economy. Flow is the most important factor in development. From the integration of rivers and roads in the Qin and Han dynasties, to modern highways and railways, to today's data becoming the fifth production factor after land, labor, capital, and technology, platforms and platform workers carry the flow of goods and information. Platforms are the "entity of flow," and platform workers are the hands that row the flow. Currently, we see that the number of platform workers in some industries has peaked, which is an inevitable structural change in the process of platform development. To hope that platforms absorb more employment, we need progress in intelligence and, more importantly, the realization of demand diversity. The emergence of new platforms like AI and XR will bring another round of infrastructure construction and opportunities for new upper-level content. Platform workers are the people around us, and they are you and me. Enabling everyone to find their function, value, and meaning in society through work is a necessary requirement and inevitable result of social system development in the era of the platform economy. In the pursuit of overall social efficiency, freedom, and equality, platforms and platform workers are of great importance.
References: Listed company public financial reports, reports, and official websites Ministry of Transport ride-hailing regulatory information interaction system National Bureau of Statistics annual statistical data, statistical yearbooks, census reports "The 2021 State of the Octoverse" GitHub "A Day in Data" Raconteur "ByteDance Data Platform Practice and Evolution Keynote" ArchSummit Global Architect Summit "Capital, Vol. 1" Marx "Annual Report on the Elderly-Friendly Travel Plan" Amap "ZTO Express Employee Count 'Rashomon'" 36Kr "People's Republic of China Occupational Classification Dictionary (2022 Edition)" Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security "China Modern Logistics Development Report" Nankai University Modern Logistics Research Center "China Digital Economy Development Research Report (2023)" China Academy of Information and Communications Technology "China Life Services Industry Employment Index Report (2022)" China Chain Store & Franchise Association x 58.com "China Truck Driver Survey Report No.1—Group Characteristics and Labor Process of Truck Drivers" Chuanhua Charity Foundation Public Welfare Research Institute "China Truck Driver Research Group" "White Paper on Customer Service Center Transformation and Development in the Intelligent Era" Alibaba Cloud "Always on the Road: Group Characteristics and Labor Process of Truck Drivers" Southern Metropolis Daily "The Past and Present of Opinion Leaders KOL: How We Share and Change Ideas" The Paper "Can the Praise Received by Couriers and Food Delivery Riders During the Pandemic Compensate for the Control and Harm They Suffer?" Interface News "Internet Celebrities and the Internet Celebrity Economy—An Analysis Based on Celebrity Theory" Foreign Economics and Management "The 'New Normal' of Food Delivery Riders" Economic Observer "Tencent New Occupations and Employment Development Report (2022)" Chinese Academy of Personnel Science x Tencent Social Research Center "It's Getting Harder to Earn 10,000 Yuan a Month Delivering Food" New Weekly "Data Age 2025" IDC "Does Storing Data on Phones Make Them Heavier?" Xiamen Metrology "Development Characteristics and Trends of New Employment Forms and Flexible Employment in the Life Services Industry" Meituan Research Institute "How to Regulate Aggregated Ride-Hailing Platforms as Penetration Approaches 30%" LatePost "How to Help 'Code Farmers' Become Contemporary 'Digital Craftsmen'—Survey Report on Young Internet Engineers" Guangming Daily "Let Couriers No Longer Be 'Bitter'—National Committee of the CPPCC Social and Legal Committee Conducts Special Research" People's Political Consultative Daily "Gathering the Majestic Power to Vigorously Advance Chinese Modernization—Answers by the Head of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions' Ninth National Survey of Workers' Conditions" Workers' Daily "Code Farmers' Options Achieve a Generation of Real Estate Myths in Beijing" Economic Observer "Juxing Xingtu Influencer 2022 Ecosystem Report" Juxing Data "J&T Express Enters, Express Industry Still Has No New Stories" YouShu DataVision "Internet Marketing Specialists Exceed 10 Million" People's Daily "Keynote Speech by Jin Bing, Inspector and Deputy Director of the Policy and Regulation Department of the State Post Bureau" 2023 China Electric Vehicle Hundred People Forum "Guiding Opinions on Safeguarding the Labor Security Rights and Interests of Workers in New Employment Forms" Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security x National Development and Reform Commission x Ministry of Transport x Ministry of Emergency Management x State Administration for Market Regulation x National Healthcare Security Administration x Supreme People's Court x All-China Federation of Trade Unions "Notice on Publicizing Information on Proposed New Occupational Information" China Employment Training Technical Guidance Center "Notice on Issuing National Vocational Skill Standards for Internet Marketing Specialists" General Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security x Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission Secretariat x General Office of the National Radio and Television Administration "Truck Drivers Who Support 100 Million People Yearn to Be 'Seen'" 36Kr "Multi-Scenario, Big Integration: 2022 New Catering Industry Report" Meituan New Catering Research Institute "51st Statistical Report on China's Internet Development" China Internet Network Information Center "The Power of Creation 2023" Juxing Data "Catering to New, Co-prosperity: 2023 New Catering Dual-Home Industry Report" Meituan New Catering Research Institute "Alibaba Local Life Rider Employment Poverty Alleviation Report: New Services Create New Employment, New Employment Nourishes New Villages" Alibaba Local Life New Service Research Center "The Truck Life of the Post-95s" Huolala "2023 China Digital Economy Frontier: Platforms and High-Quality Full Employment" China Information Economics Society x Sun Yat-sen University Internet Innovation and Service Management Research Center x Guangzhou Greater Bay Area Modern Industry Development Research Institute "2023 China Salary Guide" Michael Page International "2023 Ride-Hailing Driver Health Survey Report" Xiangdao Chuxing "2023 Programmer Data Report: There Are 26.9 Million Programmers Worldwide, Nearly Half Under 35" Programmer Inn "2023 Courier Happiness Report" JD Logistics x DT Research Institute "2023 Visible Fan Value—KOL Fan Analysis Research Report on Six Platforms" CLOUROUI "2022 China Short Video + Live E-commerce Diversified Employment Report" Yonyou Socialized Employment Research Institute x Juxing Data "2022 Live E-commerce White Paper" National Academy of Economic Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences "2022 Postal Industry Development Statistical Bulletin" State Post Bureau "2022 Xiaohongshu Data Report" Qiangua Data "2022 Tencent R&D Big Data Report" Tencent "2022 Transportation Industry Development Statistical Bulletin" Comprehensive Planning Department of the Ministry of Transport "2022 Survey Report on Truck Driver Employment Status" China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing "2022 Environmental, Social and Governance Report" JD Logistics "2022 Annual China E-commerce Market Data Report" NetEase Economic Research Center "2022 Annual Sustainability Report" Yunda "2022 Annual Programmer Salary Report" Levels.fyi "2022 Douyin Influencer Ecosystem Insights" Chanmama "2022 Kuaishou Creator Ecosystem Report" Kuaishou Big Data Research Institute x Creator Service Team "2022 Douyin Knowledge Annual Report" Juxing Data "2022 Douyin E-commerce National Brand Development Annual Report" Douyin E-commerce "2022 Influencer Marketing Development Insights Report" Newrank Research Institute x Baidu Marketing "2022 Programmer Workplace Insight Report" 51job "2022 Programmer Group Workplace Insight Report" Lagou "2021 Survey Report on Travel Platforms in China's First-Tier Cities" Tsinghua University School of Social Sciences Corporate Responsibility and Social Development Research Center x Tsinghua University School of Social Sciences Contemporary China Research Center "2021-2022 China Instant Logistics Industry Development Report" China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing x Meituan Delivery "2020 China Trunk Truck Driver Big Data" Manbang Group "2020 First Half Rider Employment Report.pdf" Meituan Research Institute x Meituan Waimai "2020 Report on New Business Forms and New Occupations in the Life Services Industry" Meituan Research Institute "2020 Ele.me Blue Knight Survey Report" Ele.me x Koubei "Labor Order Under 'Digital Control': A Study on Labor Control of Food Delivery Riders" Department of Sociology, Peking University "'14th Five-Year' Modern Logistics Development Plan" NDRC Press Conference