China Digital
China’s Major Food Delivery Showdown: What to Know about the JD.com vs. Meituan Clash
Consumers are profiting from the full-blown delivery war between JD.com and Meituan—but is it just the same game with a different name?
China Digital
How Chinese AI Videos Turned Foreigners into Villains
How viral AI videos turn racialized outsiders into threats and violent Chinese heroes into defenders of social order, China’s first nationally broadcast AI drama, and why a newspaper is being sold for 50 times its original price.
Over the past few weeks, a noteworthy amount of AI-related news has been trending on Chinese social media, which is reflected in this week’s edition.
Now that AI has entered every corner of media consumption and online life, related discussions seem to be reaching a new peak. While well-produced AI dramas are receiving more praise, low-effort AI slop is flooding video feeds and increasingly being used to stir controversy and generate clicks, fueling prejudice, hate, and cyber-nationalism. More about that further down in this newsletter.
🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS
🎬 A new AI-generated micro-drama has become all the rage on Chinese social media. While earlier AI dramas were criticized for being sloppy and repetitive, Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩) is praised for its quality and appealing protagonist, Fang Taozi (方桃子), a small-town woman pursuing her dream of becoming a model in Paris. She is so believable that viewers almost forget they are not watching a live-action production. This marks a real step up in quality for the industry, raising the bar for others. (If you want to get a taste of what it looks like, here’s a YouTube link).
Stills from the popular micro AI drama Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩).
📺 China’s national TV has now also aired its very first AI drama. While AI dramas mostly belonged to the realm of unofficial short-form online productions, the phenomenon has now made the leap to longer productions broadcast on national satellite television. Anhui TV is airing the Ming-dynasty drama The Tale of Peach Blossom Pool (桃花潭记), promoted as China’s first fully AI-produced medium-length drama centered on…
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Ed Sander
May 1, 2025 at 6:31 pm
A word on JD’s insurances, taken from our recent report on JD Waimai at Tech Buzz China:
On February 19th, JD announced it would start offering couriers a package of insurances and a housing fund to its full-time food-delivery drivers. A JD staff member shared: ‘As part of its differentiated competition strategy, JD.com also announced that it will provide riders with benefits such as five insurances and one housing fund. This move not only challenges the existing rules of the industry but also attracts public attention. Through these strategies, JD.com hopes to gain a foothold in the fiercely competitive food delivery market.’
It is hard not to see this as a strategic move to make JD a more attractive employer, as it needs couriers for food delivery. Remarkably, a few hours after JD’s news, Meituan followed with a similar announcement. One day late, Ele.me wasn’t far behind. [8] When I questioned my contact at JD about this, the response was: ‘It seems clear as media and public in China think we are driving the change.’
Meanwhile, Meituan claims that JD ‘deliberately got ahead of the game’. [10] Relevant people from Meituan and Ele.me claim that they have been discussing social security payments with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security for a long time. In recent years, such government departments have pushed platform companies to provide workers with more complete labor protection measures. [12]
Note that the JD’s insurance only applies to full-time delivery drivers. Dada only has 30,000 – 40,000 such full-time couriers; the rest of the reported 1.3 million are part-time couriers that do one (!) or more orders per year. Meituan’s full-time couriers are estimated to be 1 million. Ele.me has 200,000 full-time drivers out of 3 million. [12] JD Takeaway is piloting in Beijing and plans to expand its services to Shanghai and Guangzhou. In these three cities, about 2,200 to 2,300 full-time riders meet the requirements of the five insurances and one fund.
Besides only being offered to full-time couriers, the insurance plan is voluntary and must be paid partially by the drivers. Latepost calculated that it would cost them RMB 400 to 700 a month, equivalent to one to two days’ income. Surveys have shown that more than half of couriers are unwilling to pay this fee. Some riders, who are mostly migrant workers from rural areas and lower tier cities, are reluctant to buy more expensive insurance in the city they work in because they have already paid for the lower-cost urban and rural residents’ medical insurance and pension insurance in their hometowns. [12]