DALIAN, China -- Jiang Yanbin, a delivery worker for China's biggest online food delivery company Ele.me in this Liaoning Province city, is responsible for delivering meals from a restaurant on an electric motorcycle after customers order them by smartphone. The 36-year-old works almost every day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and handles an average of 40-plus orders a day. From time to time, he is verbally assailed by angry customers when he can not find their address.
Zhai Ruixing collects abandoned bicycles and handles other tasks in Dalian.
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Zhai Ruixing collects abandoned bicycles and handles other tasks in Dalian.
Despite the seemingly stressful work conditions, Jiang said he is content with his job.
The main reason is the exceptionally high salary, given that he never graduated from high school.
Jiang's monthly salary is about 7,000 yuan ($1,054), notably higher than the average for college-educated Dalian residents of some 5,000 yuan.
"Taking the job description into account, I cannot imagine getting more pay than I am now," he said.
His previous parcel delivery job in Dalian only offered a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, which he said was low for the responsibilities he had to bear.
People like Jiang are crucial to sustaining the country's booming new online services, including food delivery and bicycle-sharing businesses, which have arisen as a result of robust consumer spending buoyed by government measures to promote such services.
No cash, no problem
China gained its status as the "world's factory" by harnessing cheap manpower. But the slowdown in the country's economy has brought manufacturing-led economic growth to a standstill, leaving the country with many negative legacies such as overproduction of iron and steel.
The government set its eyes on boosting growth by spurring consumer spending. Its measures to promote online services proved especially successful, and sparked the expansion of smartphone-based payment services. The measures also laid the groundwork for creating food delivery apps and other new services.
The rise of the country's middle class at the same time sparked the online spending trend. In recent years, lifestyles have changed so dramatically that people do not need to carry a wallet -- they use their smartphone to pay for purchases.
The emerging industries are helping to create jobs and deliver benefits not only to migrant workers like Jiang, but also to young people with academic credentials.
Zhai Ruixing, 26, who works for Chinese bike-sharing leader Ofo, is among them. His task is to collect bikes on a university campus and maintaining them.
He graduated from Dalian Ocean University in Dalian in 2016, where he studied ship propulsion systems. Although he worked for a shipyard operated by a major state-owned company in Zhejiang Province, he quit the job after a month and a half due to his inability to acclimatize to his new life.
After job-hopping among software and other companies in Dalian, he joined his current company in May this year. He earns 5,000 yuan a month, the same as the average college-educated Dalian resident.
After paying off his debts, he plans to get married soon.
He expressed hopes for his job, saying it "offers a flexible way of working, and the business has the potential for further growth."
The online spending trend has brought the country as many benefits, including convenience and more employment opportunities, as problems. The biggest of the problems is the soaring labor costs for people engaging in monotonous work like Jiang.
Behind the higher costs is the difficulty of securing manpower. Many Chinese shun outdoor occupations, even more so if it involves working in their local area because they do not want to bump into people they know or for other reasons, according to an industry official. The solution is to turn to workers from rural parts of China.
Scrambling for workers
The food delivery and bicycle-sharing markets in 2017 are expected to grow 80% and more than eightfold, respectively, on the year. This has created intensifying competition with other businesses, such as e-commerce companies, to recruit delivery staff, forcing many of them to offer high salaries and generous benefits to secure workers.
For Jiang, who started his job in March 2016, the company provides him with a place to live and meals, allowing him to save more of his income. His near-term goal is to "buy a home in Dalian as early as next year and bring my wife and daughter here."
Jiang and four others interviewed by The Nikkei said their salary was two to four times the amount they received in their previous jobs. The majority of them reported a 50% or so increase in salary within a year of beginning their current job.
Although China still lags in infrastructure development, including transportation optimization systems and promoting efficiency by using trucks, the government has placed emphasis on the internet. To make up for the drawbacks, the country has always relied on cheap labor.
But pay for formerly low-paying jobs is outstripping that for college grads and is still on the rise.
Once the online services' growth slows, however, there will certainly be a squeeze on profits.
Prospects for automation
Manufacturing, once the backbone of the Chinese economy, now uses robots or has increasingly gone offshore in search of cheap labor in Southeast Asia and other regions.
Officials of Ele.me and other businesses said rising salaries is not an issue because demand is also growing. However, if the labor issue remains unaddressed, companies will have to resort to automation and other measures.
Asked about the prospects that his job may be replaced by drones or other machines, Jiang laughed and said, "That is unlikely to happen for the moment."
Source: China's online shopping boom relies heavily on human labor
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