Recently, I entered a Molly Tea pop-up in Beijing with my friend. While waiting for our drink, I sensed increasing tension between a Meituan delivery rider and the shop staff: the rider was on a time-crunch and the drink wasn’t ready. Soon, it escalated into a full tantrum and vicious verbal fight. People intervened to stop it getting physical. Scared, we soon got our drinks and left our shop. Minutes after as we sat somewhere near and watched the same driver sprinting towards his bike.
I didn’t think much of the incident until weeks after. My friend had introduced a new takeout app to me––an alternative to Meituan––called “Taobao Flash.” The new app had all the same food options, but with prices much cheaper and delivery times even shorter. We exclaimed how this was “too good to be true” and suspected the app as a fake. But I found out “Taobao Flash” was actually a rebranded version of Meituan’s competitor Ele.me; its “impossible” low prices and delivery times was a direct cause of the violence I witnessed weeks before.
Meituwn founder Wang Xing in an November 2016 interview with introduced the slogan “we are Meituan, we are fast, we arrive in an average of 28 minutes” (美团外卖，送啥都快，平均28分钟内到达). He described this advancement as a “great embodiment of China’s technology.”
Can algorithmic advancement be a recursive trap? While AI technologies have massively enhanced efficiency in China’s delivery system, algorithms don’t just manage labor, but actively learn to weaponize human desperation, pushing workers past unbearable limits. In a group chat amongst Meituan riders, one wrote “delivering is like racing against death, debating with traffic police, befriending red lights” (送外卖就是与死神赛跑，和交警较劲，和红灯做朋友). When a rider risks their life for a deadline, AI simply records this speed as the new normal.
This precedent will not be uniquely Chinese. While China’s unique combination of population density and digital integration has given it a head start, this model will be the blueprint for other western companies like DoorDash and Deliveroo. This will be a symptom of the global gig economy.
Discussions about the issue brought me to a poetry collection titled A Man Hurrying Against Time: Poems By A Delivery Rider. First published in February 2023, the book is a series of poems written by fifty-five year old delivery rider Wang Ji Bing. According to Xinhua Network, Wang is “a father of three, a husband, and a man who spent half his life driving through China on his delivery bike.” This book particularly struck me, and over 20 million Chinese netizens after its publishing, shedding light on a neglected group of people who lost in China’s mass digitalization.
Wang explained the incident that inspired his first poem. After rude encounter with a customer who humiliated him for his lateness and reducing his fare on his next two orders, he could do nothing but bow in apology. On his way home that day, he wrote the poem titled “A Man Hurrying Against Time.”
| Original poem: 从空气里赶出风 从风里赶出刀子 从骨头里赶出火 从火里赶出水 赶时间的人没有四季 只有一站和下一站 世界是一个地名 王庄村也是 每天我都能遇到 一个个飞奔的外卖员 用双脚锤击大地 在这个人间不断地淬火 | An approximate translation goes: From the air, he drives out the wind From the wind, he drives out knives From the bones, he drives out fire From the fire, he drives out water The man racing against time knows no seasons Only one stop and the next The world is a place name So is Wangzhuang Village Every day I encounter them One after another, deliverymen flying Hammering the earth with their feet In this world, ceaselessly quenching themselves |
Eight months later, the poem was published online by a neitizen and gained mass attraction, reaching 20 million. Netizens commented how the poem spotlighted the burdens of life amongst working class communities. The line “The man racing against time knows no seasons/Only one stop and the next” was re-tweeted many times, gaining solidarity with many. Today, “A Man Hurrying Against Time” is published amongst 182 poems in his collection and has also inspired the title.
Wang recalls how the majority of his poems was written on short breaks between delivery trips, on scrap paper, cigarette boxes, or on his own sleeves. He says that the more times he’s been beaten down by life, the more his heart has got to say, and writing helped with that a lot.
When asked why he wrote poetry, even Wang couldn’t explain it clearly himself, admitting he only knew that it was vital. Having spent his life a construction worker, a scavenger, street vendor and dump truck driver before finally becoming a delivery rider, he notes that poetry is the entity that carries him and guides him in his darkest moments. In the preface ofbook, he writes “Literature saved me” (文学拯救了我). He also famously describes the life of a delivery driver as “bitter medicine” (日子里喝下的药毫) but poetry as his “candy” (药后吃下的那颗糖).
Importantly, Wang’s book isn’t just a cry for pity or solace. It serves as the beginning of exploring the human lens in a more-than-ever automated world.
In another book, Delivery Drivers––Trapped In The System, the system is seen as an entity that swallows time. For its creators, this is an unprecedented advancement, a reflection of the deep-learning capabilities of artificial intelligence––at Meituan, this real-time intelligence system is known as the “Super Brain.”
But for those “trapped within” this system, the story is completely different. One driver told Renwu magazine that his craziest order was to complete an order: 1km, 20 minutes. Although the distance wasn’t far, he needed to wait for the order, pick-up, and deliver all within that 20-minute time slot. That day, he felt his seat bucking upward as he rode with intense speed.
This leads us to more complicated questions. Does rising AI use in work systems perpetuate wealth gaps? How can the world of AI bear efficiency for some but uncomfort for many others? If more are trapped within such systems, what makes us human?
Ever since 2019, the average delivery time per order across China’s entire food delivery industry had decreased by 10 minutes compared to three years prior. This trend is still existent and advancing at greater speed. While China’s new 2026 AI Ethics guidelines has removed extreme late fines in many cities, they are replaced with service scores.
The AI system is recursive in its nature. Before, wealth was defined by access to capital or money. Now, the way our society is designed is shifting. AI is splitting the workforce into two casts of architects and laborers, creating a gap increasingly hard to bridge. It is not just delivery riders, but lawyers, copywriters, data analysts and more to come.
We must look at China. By integrating social credit, mobile payments, and AI so seamlessly into its workforce, the country sets a precedent to a recursive trap. China’s delivery system gives us a warning about the optimization of humanity. If we allow AI to design our societies solely around efficiency and cost, we eventually optimize away everything that makes us human.
Written by Julia Jiang
