Uyghur Food Couriers and Cooperative Models in Platforms

Ahmat, a middle-aged, divorced Uyghur man in Xinjiang, left his village after a failed livestock business to seek new opportunities in the city. He turned to food delivery work, first joining a locally developed Uyghurian platform called Kamil and, later, Meituan, one of China’s most popular Mandarin platforms. Ahmat’s story perhaps captures the lives of scores of his fellow countrymen, who join the gig economy for a promised fountain-making path with flexibility, with its flip side of insecurity and uncertainty. 

As China’s platform economy rapidly expands, it draws millions of migrants into gig work, where 79.6% of workers come from rural areas. In Xinjiang, a northwestern region of China predominantly inhabited by Uyghur ethnic minorities, a similar pattern of labor practices has emerged, mirroring those observed in other Chinese cities. Many Uyghur migrants, transitioning from manufactural or agricultural work, have increasingly sought employment as food delivery riders in big cities like Urumqi and Hami. However, for Uyghur workers like Ahmat, language remains a major obstacle to entering the dominant platform like Meituan. Meituan’s interface is available only in Mandarin, creating a language barrier for those not fluent in Chinese.

In contrast, the Uyghur-led platform, Kamil and Mulazim, are bilingual platforms that cater to Uyghur-speaking communities by focusing on local food delivery in more concentrated areas of Uyghur families. While these platforms lack the market reach of Meituan, they play a crucial role in providing employment and fostering a sense of inclusion and solidarity for Uyghur workers who would otherwise be excluded from predominantly Mandarin-speaking platforms and creating a cooperative model that emphasizes worker empowerment. Platforms like Kamil and Mulazim employ a cooperative model that collaborates with several local service providers. These service providers manage courier recruitment, marketing, and partnerships with restaurants. This cooperative structure provides opportunities for collective decision-making and shares profits more equitably.

Collective Action among food couriers in China

Collective action among food delivery riders in China has undergone different phases in recent years. Between 2017 and 2024, delivery workers participated in 150 recorded collective actions. However, as the actions listed on the website are primarily public events shared on social media or other online platforms, the actual number is likely higher than what is documented. In the early period years of 2016-2017, these actions were concentrated on the issue of unpaid wages. Collective actions peaked in 2018-2019 as platforms implemented stricter policies on their price rate. After the COVID-19 pandemic, collective actions decreased significantly due to a lack of worker cohesion among workers. By 2023, collective actions began to focus on deteriorating working conditions, such as deductions in subsidies during bad weather.

The inherently unstable nature of food delivery work makes large-scale strikes challenging to organize. Most collective actions are small in scale, involving groups of 1-100 participants. The platforms’ have responded by hiring non-local replacement workers or introducing short-term benefits, which often leads to tension between new and existing workers. According to records from the record, strikes and protests mainly occurred in the Pearl River Delta region and the Yangtze River Delta region of China, which have much higher levels of economic development compared to other regions. Notably, the map does not indicate any collective actions in Xinjiang. This may be because collective actions in Xinjiang tend to be small-scale and take place privately. 

Collective Action among food couriers in Xinjiang

During my fieldwork in Xinjiang, I observed several examples of small-scale collective action and quieter tactics, through interviews with Uyghur food delivery workers and platform managers. In one case, a delivery worker was fined for a delay in delivery caused by a customer, which he found very unfair. After discussing with a few colleagues from the same town, they decided to confront the situation together.  They approached the local managers as a group and threatened to resign collectively if the deductions were enforced. Due to concerns about not being able to recruit a large number of riders in a short period of time, the managers compromised and reduced the wage penalty. As one of Ahmat stated:

 “This happens all the time. If you say you’re quitting with others, they’ll try to keep you, and then we tell them what happened when the order was delayed, and they will agree to negotiate a compromise.”

Such resistance is particularly effective in smaller cities in Xinjiang, where food delivery markets often have a more homogeneous labor force. Unlike larger cities where couriers often have diverse backgrounds and limited connections. Many workers in smaller cities are possibly from the same villages or towns and share close community ties, fostering trust and solidarity. These pre-existing social bonds have made it easier to organize collective action, enabling workers to act cohesively when faced with exploitative practices. Moreover, these collective efforts often take the form of localized, quieter tactics rather than large-scale public protests. 

While these actions have yielded localized improvements in working conditions, they also highlight the challenges of sustaining broader systemic change. In contrast, migrant workers in large cities may not be able to bargain through resistance strategies, as platforms can hire non-local replacement workers easily or introduce short-term benefits to newcomers. There is often no shortage of such labor in large cities. Without formal representation or institutionalized mechanisms for worker advocacy, the successes of such efforts remain fragile and heavily depend on local context. Nevertheless, these small-scale collective actions highlight the potential for solidarity and collective action to address inequalities in the gig economy, even under restrictive conditions.

Challenges of Cooperative Platforms

While the cooperative model offers a promising alternative to the dominant platform model, it is important to acknowledge the challenges it faces. Limited resources and reliance on human discretion in operations can create new forms of inequality, as seen in Kamil’s favoritism issues. Order distribution managers assign better orders to favored couriers. Unlike Meituan’s algorithmic order allocation, Kamil relies on human intervention. Ahmat shared his frustration, he suspects that Kamil allows for direct human interventions in order allocation, which requires workers to build strong networks with the managerial staff. He shared that: 

“If you’re in good connection with them, they’ll give you orders that are very close and in the same direction. But if you annoy them or they don’t like you anyway, they give you orders from two places that are far away, which will take much more time to deliver those orders, and I think it’s not fair.”

Achieving empowerment within these cooperative models of platforms like Kamil is very complex. On the one hand, it creates a culturally and linguistically accessible space for those who might otherwise excluded from big platforms and allows space for collective action. On the other hand, for those couriers, it requires navigating relationships with local managers, ensuring fair treatment, and building networks to voice their needs and secure fairer work conditions.

Despite Kamil and Mulazim’s cultural and linguistic accessibility, Meituan remains more attractive to Uyghur couriers due to its higher pay and larger order volumes. Uyghur-led platforms face many obstacles in scaling their businesses due to limited resources and small user bases. Ahmat also found Meituan’s algorithm-driven systems to be more transparent and predictable compared to Mulazim’s human-mediated order allocation, which he described as occasionally unfair. These financial constraints and human interventions make it difficult for cooperative platforms to attract and retain workers like Ahmat.

A Vision for Platform Cooperativism

While Uyghur-led platforms like Kamil and Mulazim have limitations, the collective resistance tactics of Uyghur workers highlight the transformative potential of cooperative models. By fostering solidarity and offering workers a voice in platform governance, such models can challenge the exploitative practices of traditional platform capitalism, which prioritizes profits at the expense of fair labor conditions. A cooperative approach envisions a future where workers control and govern platforms, ensuring fairer working conditions and more equitable economic outcomes. Platform cooperativism is rooted in principles of democratic ownership, transparency, and solidarity. Cooperative platforms empower workers to shape the rules and policies that affect their livelihoods.

The solidarity among Uyghur gig workers in resisting exploitative policies offers valuable lessons for building a more democratic platform economy. By promoting cooperative ownership and fostering greater cohesion among workers, we can reimagine the gig economy as a system where the benefits of digital labor are distributed more equitably. Ahmat’s story serves as a testament to the potential of worker-centered platforms to challenge inequalities and reimagine the future of labor in the gig economy.

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