I have been thinking about a number. 1000多万. More than 10 million delivery riders in China. That is the official count from Xinhua, published May 19, 2026. Ten million people riding electric bikes through cities I have never fully mapped, carrying food I will never eat.
For most of the past decade, these 10 million people worked without social insurance. No pension. No health coverage. No safety net, unless you count the platform’s accident insurance, which was something but not enough.
Then, in 2025, something shifted.
In March 2025, JD.com started paying full five-social-insurance and one-housing-fund for its full-time delivery riders. The company covers the employee’s share too, so take-home pay does not shrink. As of mid-2026, JD has 150,000 full-time riders on this plan. Each one costs the company about 2,000 yuan per month.
Meituan and Taobao Flash Delivery chose a different path. They do not call their riders employees. Instead, they offer a “先缴后补” model: pay first, get reimbursed later. Riders who meet a threshold (3 out of the past 6 months earning above the local social insurance base) can claim a 50% subsidy on their pension contributions. Meituan started this in April 2025 in Quanzhou and Nantong, then rolled it out nationwide in November. Hundreds of thousands of riders now participate.
I read the Xinhua story carefully. There is a line that sticks with me. A Meituan official said that riders who have been married with children are the most direct beneficiaries. Also riders who need to enroll their kids in local schools. Also riders who are a few years away from collecting their pension and do not want to break the contribution chain.
The report mentions a female rider in Nantong who approached a social insurance information desk set up by Meituan. She was shy at first. She asked: “I bring my kid to school in the morning and evening, I cook lunch at noon, I can only run deliveries in my spare time. I cannot be full-time. Can I get the subsidy too?”
The answer, apparently, was yes.
I do not know how many riders will actually go through the paperwork. The process requires registering as a flexible employee with the local social security bureau, paying the contribution yourself, submitting proof, then waiting for reimbursement. That is a lot of steps for someone working 60-hour weeks. But the infrastructure is there.
The larger story is about 84 million people. That is how many workers are now classified as “new employment forms” in China: delivery riders, ride-hail drivers, domestic workers. In April 2026, the central government issued an opinion on strengthening service management for this group. It specifically mentioned improving the social insurance system for them.
Meanwhile, the live streaming e-commerce world is also changing. A March 2026 survey found that 99.63% of online shoppers in China have bought through livestreams. But 49% complain about counterfeit or shoddy goods. The new Live Streaming E-commerce Supervision and Management Measures, which took effect in early 2026, require platforms to do “advance compensation” and “first-inquiry responsibility.” Consumer satisfaction is at 83.69%, which sounds high until you ask the other 16%.
I keep coming back to the rider in Nantong. She asked if she could get a pension even though she could not commit to full-time. She was told yes. Whether the system actually works for her, at scale, is the question no one has answered yet. But the fact that she felt able to ask, in public, at a booth set up by the platform company she works for: that is something new.
Is it enough? Of course not. Ten million is a big number. But a year ago, the number of delivery riders with any form of old-age insurance was closer to zero. Now it is not zero anymore. That is a different kind of number worth thinking about.