China eyes gig workers and influencers as delegates for Communist Party congress

For the first time, delivery couriers, ride-hailing drivers and influencers could become delegates to the Communist Party’s five-yearly national congress, as Beijing seeks to keep the group close to the official ideology.

Guidelines on selecting delegates for the meeting, to be held in the second half of next year, were issued on Saturday. The 21st party congress is expected to bring together 2,360 delegates, according to Xinhua. They will vote to elect more than 300 full and alternate members of the Central Committee from a vetted slate of candidates.

The delegates should come from various fields, including business, science and technology, national defence, political and legal affairs, education, publicity, culture, public health, sports, social governance and “new employment groups”, the party’s Organisation Department told Xinhua on Sunday.

When electing the delegates, grass-roots units must factor in balance across industries, fields and regions to ensure broad representation from all walks of life, the department said.

“In regions where the new economy and new business models are well developed, and the new forms of employment have a large presence, outstanding party members from these ‘new employment groups’ should be recommended as delegate candidates,” it said.

Selecting candidates is fundamental for the success of the 21st party congress, which is tasked with summarising the past five years and ensuring the future direction and goals of the party and country, according to Xinhua.

The candidates will be recommended by local party organisations and vetted by higher authorities before being put to a vote, the department said.

The phrase “new employment group” – referring to gig workers – has entered the official lexicon in recent years.

The authorities define it as workers in jobs that have emerged with the rise of the internet and the digital economy, including food delivery couriers, ride-hailing drivers and online marketers, who rely on internet platforms for their work, according to Xinhua.

Beijing has increasingly viewed this fluid workforce as an institutional blind spot. By embedding party units at tech enterprises and delivery hubs, authorities seek to ensure that the rapid growth of the digital economy does not outpace political cohesion.

The party has vowed to step up party building for this group, according to a landmark document adopted at the fifth plenum of the 20th Central Committee, which concluded on October 29.

It has called for guiding these groups to “listen to the party and follow the party”.

Data from last year show that China had about 84 million gig workers, out of an employed workforce of 725 million. Among them, there were about 12 million food delivery riders and 7 million ride-hailing drivers.

In October last year, the State Council issued a set of guidelines calling for stepped-up efforts to “better protect the rights and interests of workers” in this group.

It urged strengthening the oversight of these sectors, improving information disclosure and curbing “rat-race competition”.