Worker deaths put big tech in China under new scrutiny
It was 1:30 a.m. just days before the new year, and the 22-year-old employee of Pinduoduo, a Chinese e-commerce company, was leaving after a long day of work. Suddenly, she clutched her stomach and collapsed. Her co-workers rushed her to a hospital, but six hours later, she died.
Less than two weeks later, a young Pinduoduo worker leaped to his death during a brief visit to his parents. The next day, a third employee said he had been fired after criticizing Pinduoduo’s work culture.
The day after that, a delivery driver for another technology company set himself on fire, demanding unpaid wages.
The string of deaths and protests has reopened a national debate around the power of China’s biggest technology companies and the expectations they impose on their employees at a time when internet giants around the world are under fierce scrutiny.
Users have called for boycotts of Pinduoduo, one of China’s biggest online shopping platforms. Authorities in Shanghai, where the company is based, announced an investigation into its working conditions.
Pinduoduo said in statements that it would offer employees psychological counseling. It also released a screenshot of a message that it said was from the father of the female employee who died, thanking the company for its support. A Pinduoduo spokesperson declined to comment further.
Both the government and ordinary citizens have begun turning on the companies they once held up as symbols of China’s growing superpower status. Chinese officials recently announced an antitrust investigation into Alibaba. Jack Ma, that e-commerce group’s billionaire cofounder, has become a favorite villain online.
The furor also speaks to broader concerns that decades of seemingly unlimited economic promise are ending. Despite China’s rapid recovery from the coronavirus outbreak, many blue-collar workers are struggling. Young white-collar workers have grown increasingly vocal about long workdays, bleak job prospects and dissatisfaction with the rat race.
Lyu Xiaolin, an employee
at a major Chinese tech company, said she discussed the Pinduoduo deaths with colleagues, who agreed that the idea of unbearable work pressure felt all too familiar.
“The conclusion was this is too terrible, and we have to cherish our own lives,” she said. “We should make sure to leave work earlier in the future.”
She herself had switched roles in her company, which she did not want identified for fear of retaliation, because her previous job often required her to work until 11 or 12 at night, sometimes even 3 a.m.
China’s hypercompetitive work culture, especially in the tech world, has been a frequent source of concern and criticism in recent years. While many once celebrated the growth-at-all-costs attitude as an engine for China’s development, young employees have increasingly complained of the cost to their health and personal relationships.
That discontent exploded prominently in 2019 when rank-and-file tech workers organized a rare online protest against what is commonly known as “996” culture — workdays that stretch from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — and pushed awareness of China’s labor law, which generally prohibits workdays exceeding eight hours without overtime pay. But companies insist the long hours are voluntary, and authorities, wary of any unofficial mobilization, censored many discussions of the movement.
The pressures of the postepidemic job market had also helped generate sympathy for lower-wage workers, as even college graduates have been forced to take on gig work, said Zoe Zhao, who researches activism in China’s tech sector at the University of Pennsylvania.
But that pressure could also make it even more difficult for workers to enact real change, given fears of unemployment.
Lyu, the tech employee, said that for every employee who tired of the working conditions, dozens more were willing to take that employee’s place.
“The public on the one hand shouts that 996 is horrible and at the same time is rushing to get into these big tech companies,” she said. “It’s like a siege: People on the outside are trying to come in, and people inside are trying to get out.”