At just 19, retirement feels light-years away for Lin Yi. Hunched over a plate of fried noodles, the takeout delivery rider’s face goes completely blank when asked about his pension plan. “I haven’t paid into anything,” he says, before hungrily returning to his lunch.

The same goes for his colleague, Hai Liang, who is 42, though for him it’s simple arithmetic: “Pay nearly 900 yuan ($135) a month into a pension? That’s four days of deliveries for me. Can I bring myself to part with that?”

Gig workers like Lin and Hai have for years sat on the fringes of China’s social insurance system, either by choice, or because they simply don’t understand how the system works.

For the past 17 months, domestic on-demand services platform Meituan has been attempting to bring more part-time couriers into the system through a subsidy program first piloted in Quanzhou, in the eastern Fujian province, and Nantong, in the eastern Jiangsu province. Takeup has been extremely low, yet local government service centers say they receive gig workers every day asking about pensions, suggesting this group is highly interested in planning for retirement.

So why are so many opting out?

Tough sell

Lin and Hai are among about 150 riders working out of the Puxi Wanda delivery station, one of the largest stations that Meituan operates in Quanzhou.

Most riders take their meals at a small restaurant nearby, a de facto canteen with an eat-now-pay-later policy for cash-strapped customers. The owner, 35-year-old Luo Kai, welcomes a string of exhausted, sweat-soaked couriers throughout the day.

“Most of these guys have to eat on credit. How realistic is it to talk to them about paying into a pension fund?” he asks.

China’s social insurance system covers five core benefits: pension insurance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work-related injury insurance, and maternity insurance. Contributions are mandatory for workers with labor contracts, but not for those with service contracts, which applies to gig workers, who are mostly managed by temp agencies and third-party enterprises.

In addition to recent efforts to expand medical insurance and work-related injury insurance to freelancers, gig workers, and the self-employed, the central government has been running a flexible-employment pension system since 2005, with contribution bases adjusted according to the regional average monthly salary.

Working with local authorities, Meituan began running its own program in November, targeting part-time employees after a seven-month pilot in two eastern cities. The program encourages couriers to pay 50% of their state pension contribution, with the Beijing-based tech company promising to cover the rest.

To qualify for the Quanzhou pilot, launched in April 2025, riders had to be aged 16 to 60 (50 or 55 for women, depending on their role), and must have earned at least 4,433 yuan for three of the previous six months. Although average monthly earnings at the city’s delivery stations have fallen in recent years, most workers could easily meet the requirements. Yet fewer than 20 riders at the Puxi Wanda station signed up, and the number has not even reached double digits this year. Meituan has not released national enrollment data.

Wu Xiaohua, who manages the station, suggests the low takeup there is linked to high turnover. “It’s normal in this line of work,” he says, adding that in the run-up to the Chinese New Year holiday in February, nearly 80 gig workers quit, including some of those first 20 signees.

“It’s not that we haven’t tried to promote the program,” Wu adds. “There’s just something contradictory about asking people who want to make quick money to pay for pension insurance they won’t use for decades.”

According to recent research by Nankai University, the average age of a food-delivery rider in China is 33. With the country’s retirement age set to rise by 2040 to 63 for men and 55 for women in blue-collar jobs, low-to-medium-salary gig workers could be forgiven for “earning for now.”

“We deliver food to cover the basics,” says 25-year-old rider Wang Xu, who eats the cheapest set menu at Luo’s restaurant twice a day, every day. “Does pension insurance count as a basic?”

Pay to receive

In 2024, a team led by professor Zhang Dandan at Peking University’s National School of Development surveyed more than 30,000 riders for a major food-delivery platform about their views on social insurance. The study found that more than half wanted a pension, but few had interest in paying for it, while 23% said they wouldn’t enroll even if contributions were mandatory.

Just under 40% were willing to contribute less than 5% of their monthly income, and fewer than 10% agreed with the prevailing rate for gig workers, the poll showed.

When Meituan launched its pilot, many riders initially believed that the company would cover 100% of their monthly pension contributions. After several rounds of promotion and discussion, representatives for both sides agreed to a 50-50 split.

Yet many remain wary of allowing money to be drawn directly from their salary.

“They don’t understand that the contributions go directly into the state social security system. They worry that the platform is trying to take a bigger share of their earnings,” says Jin Luhui, a courier team leader who signed up to Meituan’s subsidized pension program in April 2025.

Jin explains that his daughter was due to start elementary school in September, and that Quanzhou’s enrollment rules require parents to have paid at least six months of social insurance. With the program, his family was able to meet the criteria.

Repeated information sessions have helped clear up some confusion among riders, such as whether a pension is tied to where they work rather than their hometown (many gig workers in big cities are rural migrants), or whether their contributions would no longer count if they stopped working as a takeout courier.

For many people, especially the younger generation, food delivery is a seasonal gig — something to do when other industries are quiet. In Quanzhou, for example, local shoe factories pay much higher wages at peak times, attracting many riders to make the switch.

The survey by Zhang’s team showed that takeout couriers stay in the job for only about six months on average. This means many could struggle to meet Meituan’s pension subsidy requirements.

In Quanzhou’s busy shopping district, roughly 50% of the more than 30 Meituan riders that reporters spoke with had been in the industry only about three months. Few knew about the company program in any detail; instead, conversations invariably turned to earnings, order volumes, and whether the grueling work is still worth it.

“I used to make more than 50 deliveries a day. Now I’m lucky to hit 35,” says Wang, who rotates between running his own business, working full-time jobs, and delivering food. He recently returned to couriering after more than a year away and believes the job has gotten a lot harder.

“When orders are down, asking riders to pay social insurance is a tough sell,” says Jin. “But I still mention at team meetings that the Meituan app has a complete guide on how riders can contribute.”

Meanwhile, some are “just bad at managing their finances,” according to station manager Wu. The app allows workers to withdraw their earnings three times a month, yet he says he advances around 20,000 yuan each month to staff who are running low on cash.

Risks and rewards

For most, the decision over whether to contribute to pension insurance ultimately comes down to whether they feel it’s the best use of their money, especially in the face of more immediate risks.

“Once I’ve saved enough from deliveries, I’ll use it to open a restaurant. If business is good, won’t the returns be better than a pension?” asks Jin Cailin, a Shanghai-based delivery rider in his 30s. He says he’d only consider pension contributions after turning 45.

Li Min, 27, has been delivering food in Quanzhou for barely a week. For him, receiving benefits 30 years down the line feels abstract. He’s far more interested in saving to buy a new electric bike and a Samsung smartphone, as well as to pay for orthodontic treatment costing 16,000 yuan. “I prefer seeing the results of my labor right away,” he says.

Zhu Tian, a researcher involved in Meituan’s rider protection initiatives, suggests a mismatch between riders’ micro daily realities and the platform’s macro view of their needs. In principle, a social security system for riders should address short-term risks such as work-related injuries before extending to retirement. However, Meituan’s internal research suggests otherwise.

In-house surveys have found that 70% of the company’s riders hold rural household registration, with the vast majority already covered by basic medical insurance programs in their hometown. Traffic accidents also come under the platform’s mandatory occupational injury insurance, while some riders have commercial accident insurance on top of that. Zhu says that this leaves pensions as the most prominent gap in the system.

At the same time, Meituan’s data shows that its highest-earning, most active riders are among the least willing to pay social insurance contributions. “Those who push themselves hard to earn more are often under pressure from household expenses or debt,” Zhu explains. “What they need is money now.”

“We had hoped pension subsidies would help us retain more riders long term, but they haven’t been very effective,” he adds.

The subsidy program is part of Meituan’s broader efforts to build a more stable workforce through stronger employment protections. In Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, and Jiangsu’s Wuxi City, full-time riders are now offered comprehensive social insurance coverage. Yet the company has struggled to fill these positions.

This points to a deeper disconnect between China’s social insurance system, which was designed for conventional employment, and gig workers, who move to a different rhythm: they count their earnings monthly or even daily, move easily between industries, and can stop or start working at any time.

“Gig workers tend to focus more on immediate earnings, but giving them the option to pay into a pension may encourage some of them to start planning longer term,” says professor Zhang Dandan.

Zhao Qing, an associate professor at Wuhan University’s School of Political Science and Public Administration, believes gig work sits uneasily with the current pension system, which requires sustained contributions. “The system needs to be more flexible,” she says.

After spending more than a year promoting Meituan’s program, Wu has found that the best strategy is not to oversell or pressure riders but to respect what they decide. “Sometimes understanding why they won’t pay is as valuable as getting them to sign up,” he says.

For example, Hai, a twice-married father of two, is his family’s sole breadwinner. He rents a room without air conditioning for 300 yuan a month and, until recently, wore a work uniform that had turned black with grime. “He won’t listen when we tell him to slow down,” says Wu. “He just keeps working, trying to make as much as he can.”

Although he would like a pension, Hai has moved frequently among food-delivery platforms, taking advantage of the salary incentives offered to riders as the market intensified, so he doesn’t yet meet the requirements for Meituan’s program.

In July, Wu handed Hai a brand-new uniform, one of the prizes from a recent Riders’ Day event that Hai didn’t have time to attend. Wu feels that a small, immediate comfort is sometimes all someone needs to keep going.

(Due to privacy concerns, Lin Yi, Luo Kai, Zhu Tian, and Li Min are pseudonyms.)

Reported by Yang Shuyuan and Wu Kaiwen.

A version of this article originally appeared in Original (Jiefang Daily). It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.

Translator: Chen Yue; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.

(Header image: VCG)