By Jesus Centeno
Beijing, Aug 30 (EFE).- A summer box-office hit in China has sparked a debate in the country about the precarious state of the labor market and the difficulties facing thousands of people working as home delivery drivers in temporary jobs.
‘Ni Xing Ren Sheng’ (literally ‘A Life in Reverse’ which was translated into English as ‘Upstream’) topped the Chinese box office on its opening day on Aug. 10, grossing 38.7 million yuan ($5.4 million). Since then, it has accumulated some 340 million yuan.
The film, by director, Xu Zheng, known for his roles as a comic actor, tells the story of a middle-aged man, Gao, who is fired from a tech company and is forced to take a job as a home-delivery driver to pay his mortgage and his ailing father’s medical bills.
Dressed in yellow uniforms similar to those of the Chinese platform Meituan, the protagonist shines a light on a harsh reality China’s delivery drivers face: racing their electric scooters to deliver orders on time, sometimes causing serious traffic accidents, dealing with abusive customers or interacting with buildings’ security guards.
Above all, the plot has caught the attention of Chinese audiences because it addresses the pressures faced by drivers – who are paid less than a dollar per delivery and barely have time to rest – and for dealing with the uncertainty of the labor market.
Low domestic and international demand, risks of deflation and insufficient stimulus, together with a real estate crisis that has not yet bottomed out and a lack of confidence in the private sector are some of the reasons that analysts cite to explain the delicate situation that the world’s second largest economy is going through.
The China Development Forum itself has pointed out that the country runs the risk of stagnating in the so-called ‘middle-income trap’, a common phenomenon in economies that come from rapid growth based on investment.
“It’s not easy to find a good job now. We skilled young people suffer from it, but many live at home with their parents or go back to their villages if they can’t find what they are looking for in the big cities. But many other people, like the protagonist, have no choice but to accept jobs with much worse conditions than they had before,” Lin Yinyue, a marketing specialist, told EFE.
“China is beginning to see some of the ills that are afflicting developed economies. The feeling is that in the West there is a shrinking middle class and here there is a middle class that is not settling down.
“After years of growth, we thought things would always get better. Suddenly, that thought no longer exists,” he says. EFE
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