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I'm Niu Honglin, joined by Steve and Yushan.
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For many young people entering the workforce today, the traditional 905 job is no longer the only or even the preferred option.
Flexible schedules, multiple income streams and digital entrepreneurship are increasingly part of their career landscape.
In China.
This shift has filled the rapid rise of new forms of employment, from delivery services to livestream commerce, not to mention AI-related new jobs.
As lawmakers and political advisors gather at the two sessions, the country is taking a closer look at how this new generation of workers is reshaping the country's labor market.
Imagine a workforce larger than the population of most countries.
Here in China, more than 200 million people now work in flexible forms of employment, from delivery riders navigating crowded city streets to live streamers selling products to online audience.
Much of this growth has been powered by digital platforms, which connect workers and consumers in real time.
As the two sessions unfold in Beijing several days ago, this massive and evolving workforce has moved to the center of policy discussions about employment rights, production and the future of the country's digital economy.
Because we have to admit that some of these jobs would be.
If you have a little yellow pad writing down the pros and cons of these jobs there are many on both columns you would be.
You would need a big yellow pad, A big one.
Not a little yellow pad.
Exactly.
But what jobs are we talking about exactly?
Well, so many.
It covers all various industries.
The catering industry, express delivery logistics healthcare, and also in education, retail and just all other sectors.
So this is, according to one of the CPPCC members earlier this week, or rather last week, because by the end of 2024, the number of flexible workers in China had exceeded 240 million, among which 84 million were engaged in these new forms of employment.
That really covers a lot of people, and it makes it really important.
They are highly significant that that's for China's economy and society.
And also it's highlighted and mentioned multiple times in this year's two sessions as well, as you said.
These are really really important jobs too for the economy as a whole, because they connect.
If you think about it, It's kind of like a spider web.
These types of jobs connect production to distribution to circulation to consumption.
An example, an easy example, maybe the easiest example would be delivery workers, right?
Realizing the flow of goods from the factory to the end users like you or I, And then by creating these huge amounts of job positions,
You're helping out groups like college students or college graduates, or migrant workers or re-employed workers.
And they're all playing this kind of irreplaceable role together that helps keep us moving on a daily basis, from morning to night.
Yes.
And when it comes to new forms of employment, there is a very interesting trait that all these different occupations share, or most of these occupations share.
That is, it is kind of a platform based online jobs that cross traditional full time and self-employment boundaries.
Like what Steve has already mentioned, delivery riders, ride hailing drivers and live streamers.
Yes, they can do a task today and they, if they decide to change a job, they can do it very easily, which is why many people would like to have that job, because of the flexibility.
If I want to take care of my kids today.
I do not have to work today as a delivery driver, for example, because I earn my salary on an order by order basis, depending on the kind of delivery driver I am being I'm referring to here.
And also, besides the flexible new form of jobs or new form of employment, there's also AI in the job market these days, which means, on one hand, they're creating new jobs like AI trainers.
We've talked about this on Roundtable.
Data annotators.
They give data different labels, making the data a bit more high quality traits, so that when they're putting into an AI training program process, the AI can learn a little bit better.
And there's also prompt engineers.
I think we've talked about this on Roundtable as well.
Yeah, how to talk to the AI better.
Exactly.
And you can help those who are working with you with better prompts so they can work better.
And there's also, for example, human machine collaboration managers, for I think in some of the industrial park here in Beijing, when they introduce automobile that are driverless mode automobile, they want to make sure they would adjust the situation or the driving way of the car so the car can better fit the real on the ground situation in the industrial park and all these jobs.
You don't really need to adjust the cars all the time.
You adjust them for a while and after you finish this task, you move on to the next test, which makes the job flexible.
Yeah, i remember just not long ago we touched upon the topic of one person company.
Like you start your own company and leave the rest to AI and to the machine, so that you have like, longer window of time to do those that only require human efforts to decide on.
So that's something that we are moving on to these days and with the internet era, with the digital era just booming up, the development of everything, that only makes sense because right now, the rapid development of the internet, the smartphone, how people are so closely engaged with contents from our smartphones, the big data and algorithms those have all built stable online platforms that can really connect workers with services and consumers in real time.
Here's one very funny example.
So My boyfriend recently started his work in Shenyang and he adopted a cat in Beijing.
Now I know why you fell in love.
Here's the thing.
He wants to raise the cat in Shenyang, but the cat is in Beijing.
So how do we make that move happen?
I told him, here's exactly what I told him.
Regarding logistics, if you want a way out, there is something that's already out there in the market.
And where did I search?
Red note, there are a lot of people just doing car lending.
They do like SUV drives between different provinces and different major cities, just focusing dedicated on transporting pets of larger size that couldn't get on the high speed train or couldn't get on the airplane.
And Maine Coon is the type of cat we're adopting.
And it's a big boy.
I feel like your relationship is turning into an episode of Roundtable.
You're sharing logistical information.
You're searching deep into stories.
But that is a good story.
It's a good example.
Exactly.
Thank you, Holen.
Where I'm heading is that for logistics, for example, there are people doing businesses.
And really providing in time need.
You only need to book like one to two days ahead.
And that's how fast they can get things done for you.
Yeah.
I mean, the impression that I get about China now is that the economy is how the economy functions.
Many aspects of it is changing quite rapidly because you've got the platform economy.
You've got the sharing economy.
You've got online retail plus food delivery.
You've got live streaming e-commerce, which is booming now.
And all of these things require different types of workers that have different types of needs.
Not everyone wants or can handle a nine to five office job because of different life circumstances.
Precisely.
So there's absolutely a market.
And that's evidenced by the numbers that we heard for the number of workers needed for these types of jobs.
Yes.
So on one hand, we see the economy booming, we see the market there and we see more and more people, more and more young people, wanting to get into these industries, wanting to get into these jobs to enjoy the perks.
But on the other hand, we're not saying it's all rosy and perfect.
The picture is Definitely with some challenges when it comes to delivery drivers, when it comes to online live streamers, they also face challenges.
Yeah, of course.
And first of all, we've got these unclear legal status and lack of labor contracts for these kind of new form of employment workers.
So China?
Currently, the current labor laws do not actually clearly define rights and responsibilities for flexible workers and platforms and employers.
And so labor standards, they're still under research.
And as a result, over half of flexible workers have no employment contract.
And that can lead to a lot of potential issues.
I mean, it's difficult to protect rights when you don't have a contract in place to protect your rights and but when you do have a contract for example you sign a one-year contract you kind of not to say lose that flexibility.
But the situation is definitely changing.
That being said, we're not saying the country should not be thinking about this, this problem or this question.
Actually, a lot of people are discussing this.
We hear many different political advisors, as well as lawmakers, npc deputies, talking about how to improve the situation, because we simply cannot ignore this huge workforce.
Yeah, indeed.
Speaking of the political side, of how decisions are making nowadays, officials suggest better tracking just how many such workers there are and what kinds of jobs they do.
So the officials, they want to recognize real working relationship even without a formal contract.
So workers, they can really get fair pay and a good amount of rest without any possibilities of being squeezed to overwork, and also there's safety protection for all of them.
And also the officials.
Also propose setting minimum hourly wages for delivery and ride-hailing services to help more workers join work-related unions to defend their rights when they need to.
Yes, and if you take a look at all of these, or many of these advices, they're actually being very practical about it.
We are not moving from having not a lot of contract now to okay, all of you sign a contract, you have to work from nine o'clock to five o'clock and you have to work Exactly the time as a office worker.
They are suggesting different plans, different social security related paying plans for different types of flexible workers.
They're suggesting local government pay a certain percentage for them if they decided to dedicate it in paying their social security related insurance.
Yeah.
And they're also suggesting that because many of these workers, one of their challenges is that they want to move across different provinces, which in China, could be a situation because you're paying your social insurance to the province so that later the province can give you a compensation when you need it.
So if you move to a new province, it's not covered.
It's covered if you do the transfer, but currently the transfer process is not as smooth.
So they're suggesting we can make it smooth.
And we also even have deputies saying for the full-time delivery riders yes, you should give them formal labor contracts and participation in the full social security system.
And for the stable, long-term part-time riders, maybe you can automatically enroll them into the basic income or working hours with platforms companies providing partial contribution subsidies, meaning that the percentage that the company is paying for their social insurance plan is a bit lower than the full-time workers, but they still have to pay, so the workers themselves can pay a bit less.
And when it comes to the occasional or low-income gig workers, they are encouraged, but they're not required to participate.
They can judge on their own situation to decide whether or not or how to participate.
This makes it both flexible but also insured.
Sure.
Sure.
And workers need to be aware as well.
It's not all on the companies, right?
There was a survey result that showed that I think it was between 42, maybe 42 to somewhere around 50 percent of employees.
These flexible workers weren't even aware of what kind of insurances they had.
So the workers have to be aware of what's going on too.
And besides that, we see more and more local government as well as companies letting their workers learning AI technology and giving them subsidies when they sign up for such courses, so that they can better adjust to the fast-moving work-related landscape.
And we would love... that kind of situation always.
And we'll continue to observe that here on Roundtable.
And that brings us to the end of today's show.
Thank you so much for being with us.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on the topics.
Leave us a comment wherever you listen to your podcast, or send us an email to roundtablepodcast at qqcom.
I'm Niu He Lin with Steve and Yushan.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
