Behind JD's War Against Meituan

How Two Chinese Gig Economy Giants' Struggle Reveals the Social Insurance Dilemma for Millions of Delivery Riders

On April 21, Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com published an "Open Letter to All Delivery Rider Brothers"(致全体外卖骑手兄弟们的公开信) that, while not explicitly naming its competitor, clearly targeted Meituan—China's dominant food delivery platform. JD alleged that Meituan was prohibiting part-time riders from accepting orders from competing platforms, resulting in delayed deliveries for JD's customers.

Going beyond this specific accusation, JD employed politically charged rhetoric to attack Meituan. The letter claimed that Meituan had failed to provide social insurance for its riders, used algorithms to impose increasingly unrealistic delivery times, exploited merchant partners, and tolerated "ghost kitchens"—food preparation operations without proper licensing or physical storefronts, often raising food safety concerns.

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Meituan swiftly responded that same evening, dismissing JD's claims as "rumors." In its statement, Meituan asserted that after investigation, "among all statements made by a certain platform, only the claim about 'recent delivery delays' has any basis in fact."

From a business perspective, this dispute signals intensified competition in China's food delivery market. However, I believe this controversy gained nationwide attention because it touched on a sensitive societal issue: the social welfare and labor protections of delivery riders and other gig economy workers. While JD's entry into this space could potentially foster healthy competition, I find their strategy of leveraging public opinion through moral posturing problematic.

Why JD Targeted Meituan

To understand this conflict, we must first examine the food delivery landscape in China. Over the past decade, as urbanization accelerated and lifestyles became increasingly fast-paced, food delivery emerged as a fiercely contested sector among Chinese tech companies. Currently, Meituan dominates approximately 70% of the market, with Alibaba's Ele.me controlling roughly 30%—creating a duopoly.

As both Meituan and JD solidified their positions in food delivery and e-commerce respectively, their business territories began to overlap. JD leveraged its sophisticated logistics network to expand into quick commerce with "JD Instant Delivery."(京东秒送) Concurrently, Meituan broadened beyond restaurant deliveries to include household essentials through "Meituan Flash Purchase"(美团闪购)—directly challenging JD's core territory.

Why This Corporate Dispute Resonated Nationwide

Two factors elevated this business conflict into a national conversation. First, food delivery has become integral to urban professional life in China. White-collar workers, who are also the most vocal participants in online discourse, depend on these services daily. When a topic affecting their everyday lives enters public debate, it naturally captures widespread attention, transforming industry competition into public discourse.

Second, JD's strategic approach was remarkably calculated. While offering competitive subsidies on one hand, they skillfully tapped into broader societal concerns about equality. By framing their open letter as advocacy for rider welfare, JD positioned themselves as champions of social justice while casting Meituan as an exploitative employer. Whoever orchestrated this campaign clearly understood the dynamics of Chinese social media and the current social climate.

Traditional competition between delivery platforms typically involved consumer discounts and subsidies. JD's innovation was shifting the focus from consumers to riders themselves. By accusing Meituan of "exclusivity practices" (forcing partners to choose one platform exclusively), JD reframed commercial competition as advocacy for labor rights. The letter's very title—"To All Delivery Rider Brothers"—established JD as the defender of workers against Meituan's alleged exploitation.

As China's middle class has expanded, public discourse has increasingly focused on social equality and labor protections. The rapid growth of delivery platforms has been accompanied by controversial labor practices—excessive outsourcing, algorithmic management, and tacit acceptance of extreme working hours. JD capitalized on these concerns by claiming Meituan had "never provided social insurance to a single rider in over a decade" and "used sophisticated algorithms to extract maximum labor from riders." This effectively transformed what could have been a discussion about price competition into a debate about corporate social responsibility.

While some might view JD's occupation of the moral high ground as a tactical win, I see it as short-sighted corporate "involution"—competing through increasingly extreme measures within a limited space. As the saying goes, "when you point one finger at others, three fingers point back at yourself." In today's challenging global environment, where overseas expansion is difficult, such mutual accusations in a mature market rarely produce meaningful progress. JD's approach of weaponizing social sentiment while making empty promises about rider welfare could ultimately backfire on its own reputation.

The Challenges of Rider Social Insurance

However, JD’s accusation does raise the important question- the lack of social welfare for gig economy workers. On February 19, shortly after President Xi’s meeting with private sector entrepreneurs, both JD and Meituan announced plans to provide social insurance—JD for its full-time riders and Meituan for both full-time and stable part-time riders. While this represents progress, it affects only a small fraction of the delivery workforce.

Delivery platforms typically employ riders through two ways: either as workers managed by the platform or its subcontractors (with required working hours and obligations during peak times), or as independent contractors who register as individual businesses and enjoy flexibility in choosing when and how much to work.

Meituan's 2023 statistics reveal that among its 7.45 million riders, over 80% work part-time. Only 11% accept orders more than 260 days annually, while approximately 48% work less than 30 days per year. Similarly, although JD pledged insurance for full-time riders, its delivery operator Dada Group employs just 30,000-40,000 full-time riders—a tiny fraction of the 1.3 million "active riders" (those who completed at least one delivery annually) on their platform. This fluid employment relationship makes it difficult to apply traditional social insurance systems that are predicated on stable employer-employee relationships.

As China's Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Wang Xiaoping observed: "Workers in new employment forms have undefined labor relationships, flexible working arrangements, and unstable incomes—creating novel challenges for traditional social security systems designed around formal employment."

China's standard social security package includes five insurance programs and a housing fund. The five insurances cover pensions (with employees contributing 8% of salary), medical care (2% employee contribution), work injury (employer-funded), unemployment (0.3% employee contribution), and maternity (employer-funded). The non-mandatory housing fund is additional. Excluding the housing fund, employees must contribute approximately 10.3% of their income toward these programs.

Many riders, lacking financial reserves or requiring immediate cash flow, resist seeing their take-home pay reduced for social insurance contributions. According to Southern Weekend reporting, a Shanghai-based delivery subcontractor noted that 85% of their riders declined social insurance enrollment. The situation is further complicated for those working across multiple platforms, making it impossible to establish a single employer for insurance purposes.

Innovative Approaches to Gig Worker Protection

Facing the fundamental incompatibility between gig economy employment and traditional social security frameworks, both platforms and government agencies have been exploring alternative models—efforts I find encouraging. At the national level, China established an occupational injury protection system in 2022 that decouples injury insurance from formal employment relationships, enabling gig workers to access basic injury protection.

Delivery platform have pioneered direct subsidy programs for pension insurance using a "basic + flexible" two-tier structure. This approach sets the minimum contribution threshold at 60% of local average wages, allowing riders to select their preferred contribution level. Riders qualify if their monthly income reaches this benchmark and has met the standard for at least three months within a six-month period. Platforms subsidize 50% of the minimum contribution, and importantly, riders retain these benefits even after leaving the platform—reducing anxiety about losing accumulated benefits.

Professor Zhang Dandan from Peking University's National School of Development notes that this model's strength lies in its shift away from employment relationships toward quantifiable income thresholds as the basis for participation. This approach accommodates diverse worker types—from crowdsourced to part-time—while its "de-employer" and "de-locality" design alleviates riders' concerns about being dependent on specific platforms.

Zhang identifies two significant limitations of current pilot programs. First, workers active across multiple platforms may fail to meet subsidy thresholds on any single platform, falling into a "multi-platform, zero-subsidy" protection gap. She advocates for cross-platform subsidy-sharing mechanisms. Second, the contribution system remains overly complex, and many riders lack sufficient information to make optimal social insurance decisions. Zhang recommends completely separating social security from China's household registration system and implementing graduated subsidies based on income levels with central government support—enhancing fairness across the system.

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