Dandan Zhang on why mandating fewer working hours in China may be premature
PKU labor economist warns that cutting working hours without protecting income would leave workers even worse off.
Few ideas sound more sensible than giving overworked Chinese workers more rest. Surveys suggest that non-agricultural employees in China were averaging more than 50 hours a week in 2023, while fieldwork indicates that gig factory workers put in 10 to 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week.
Yet Dandan Zhang of Peking University argues that the issue is more complicated. For many workers, long hours are simply the price of earning enough. In that context, the more immediate concern is not leisure but income.
That, Zhang suggests, is the central dilemma. China is still at a stage where many households are building up savings and financial security, while firms face intense pressure to upgrade and remain competitive. If the state mandates shorter working hours without protecting workers’ income or providing broader policy support, companies may respond by cutting jobs, outsourcing more work, or replacing labour with machines. Workers could end up with fewer hours, but also less income and less security.
In Zhang’s view, a better approach would be a combination of raising the minimum wage and improving fiscal and tax policies to steer a greater share of social wealth toward workers.
Dandan Zhang is a Professor in Economics and Deputy Dean at the National School of Development (NSD), and Deputy Dean of the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, Peking University.
The transcript of the interview was published by Tencent Finance on 5 March 2026. The interview was conducted by 冯彪 (Feng Biao) of the Chinese tech giant's news outlet.
—Yuxuan Jia
张丹丹：零工劳动者工时明显偏长，缩减工时前提是保障工资水平
Dandan Zhang: Gig Workers Put in Too Long Hours, and Any Cut in Working Time Must Be Matched by Protection for Their Pay
Working Hours Are Long Across the Board, and Gig Workers Stand Out Even More
Q1: What is the overall picture of working hours in China today, and what stands out when compared with other countries?
Dandan Zhang: According to 2023 data, average annual working hours in OECD countries are generally below 2,000 hours. Assuming 50 working weeks a year, that comes to no more than 40 hours a week. In some developing countries, however, annual working hours reach 2,300 hours, or about 46 hours per week.
Compared with developed economies, working hours in China are relatively long. Several major household survey datasets, including the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), and the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), show that in 2023, non-agricultural workers in China were working more than 50 hours a week on average. That gives a broad picture of overall working hours. Of course, different surveys use different definitions and samples, so there are some variations.
Generally speaking, this kind of household survey covers a relatively low proportion of migrant workers, mobile populations, and gig workers, as many of them live in dormitories or on the urban periphery. Their working hours are also markedly longer than those of local urban workers.
Overall, differences in working hours are mainly shaped by a country’s stage of development, household wealth accumulation, and industrial structure.
Q2: You have spent years tracking migrant populations and gig workers. What do their working hours look like?
Dandan Zhang: Based on my sample survey data, among gig workers, those working in manufacturing plants generally work 10 to 12 hours a day. Even after taking out meal breaks and short rests, their actual working time is still no less than 10 hours, and they work six or seven days a week.
Take food-delivery riders, another segment of gig workers, as an example. My research shows that around 20 per cent of riders, mainly station-managed riders and crowdsourced riders in high-commitment schemes such as “Lepao” and “Youxuan”, complete nearly 80 per cent of all orders. Some of them worked an average of 12.6 days out of 14 days, with average daily working hours of 10.6 hours. Of that, about 6.5 hours were spent delivering orders, while around four hours were spent waiting for the next one.
These riders work at very high intensity and earn relatively higher incomes. In some cities, their monthly earnings can remain steadily above RMB 12,000 [$1,743]. The other 80 per cent are mostly crowdsourced riders. Their work is more sporadic, their income is limited, and their employment is much less stable and continuous. But many of these crowdsourced riders work part-time, so it is harder to calculate their total working hours.
I have also found that the gig sector likewise exhibits a polarisation, where “involution” and “lying flat” coexist. Some people work continuously for months on end, while others switch jobs frequently or work only two days a week. In fieldwork carried out in 2025 in places including Suzhou and Shenzhen, I found that some young workers preferred daily pay. They would work for two days, earn enough to cover a week’s living expenses, and then stop working. They also gave little thought to long-term issues such as social insurance, household registration, or starting a family.
Q3: China moved from a six-day workweek to a five-day workweek in the 1990s, and later introduced statutory holidays. Compared with historical data, what major changes can be seen in working hours?
Dandan Zhang: Broadly speaking, the year 2000 was a turning point. Before 2000, average weekly working hours were in the 40-plus range, still below 50 hours. After 2000, they gradually rose above 50 hours a week, and from 2006 onwards they remained at that relatively high level. One possible explanation is that after China joined the WTO, export orders grew rapidly, which lengthened working hours.
Any Cut in Working Time Must Be Matched by Protection for Workers’ Pay
Q4: At China’s current stage of economic transition, is it necessary and feasible to reduce working hours and increase leave?
Dandan Zhang: Given the current weakness in domestic demand and a low consumption rate, especially in service consumption, and considering workers’ physical and mental health, reducing working hours is certainly necessary.
That said, in terms of practical conditions, I have not studied other sectors, so I cannot make a blanket judgment. But at least for gig workers and food-delivery riders, I think it is very difficult at present to push for shorter hours and more leave.
I have quietly “lurked” in many WeChat groups for delivery riders, and I often see team leaders post messages saying, “There are a few rest slots available tomorrow; anyone willing to take leave can sign up.” Very few riders volunteer. In my fieldwork, the most common demand riders raise is not for more time off. What they want is more orders. The policy they dislike most is compulsory rest.
Some platforms also design their incentives so that riders only get a higher per-order rate once they have worked a certain number of hours. In other words, if they want to earn more, they have to work longer. Otherwise, their income does not go up. So if their earnings are not protected, talk of shorter hours and more leave is simply not very realistic.
Q5: In that case, which do you think is more urgent: raising hourly pay or cutting working hours? What policies would you suggest?
Dandan Zhang: There really is a dilemma here. If we want shorter working hours and more rest time, then workers’ existing income levels must not be allowed to fall.
But if higher wages are borne entirely by businesses or platforms, that raises costs, which could directly reduce employment. And with AI advancing so quickly, it could also accelerate the replacement of people by machines or shrink formal employment and encourage more outsourcing and gig work. If that happens, workers’ social security coverage and leave entitlements may become even harder to guarantee.
At the moment, one measure I can think of is raising the minimum wage, because that is something the government can directly influence. In my field research, I have found that when firms set wage levels, the benchmark they most often refer to is the local minimum wage. This is especially true in manufacturing, where pay for gig workers is highly sensitive to the minimum wage. Around 2010, minimum wages in many places were rising quite quickly, but in recent years the pace of increase has slowed.
At the same time, wage increases cannot fall entirely on firms. They also need fiscal support. At the policy level, there is now greater emphasis on “investing in people”. The recommendations for the 15th Five-Year Plan also state that “Personal incomes should increase in step with economic growth, and remuneration should rise in tandem with labour productivity increases”.
I think that direction is very important. Workers need money before they can have leisure. That also means the distribution of income and the broader flow of wealth in society need to tilt more towards labourers.
Q6: From the perspective of labour laws and regulations, where do you think further refinement is needed?
Dandan Zhang: Compared with the old standard working-time system, today’s gig work is fragmented. This makes overtime harder to define. Existing laws and regulations still lack more detailed standards, which leaves grey areas in enforcement.
I believe one point policy needs to pay particular attention to is this: many measures are introduced with good intentions and are meant to protect workers, but there is always a risk that, in practice, they may end up harming them instead. For example, a policy may be designed to protect workers’ wages and right to rest, but if the end result is unemployment or a further expansion of gig work, that would in fact be detrimental to workers.
Q7: Some firms are now voluntarily reducing working hours or giving workers more flexible schedules. There is also the phenomenon of younger entrants to the workforce—“the post-2000 generation is rectifying the workplace” by refusing to work overtime. How do you see these developments?
Dandan Zhang: I think it still depends on the underlying conditions. Shorter working hours require a certain level of wealth accumulation, whether in the form of a company’s financial strength or a family’s intergenerational wealth. Firms and individuals with those conditions can move first and experiment.
What worries me most is a one-size-fits-all approach. If it were imposed across the board, the negative impact on employment could be significant. Overall, I think China is still at a stage of household wealth accumulation, while also facing intense competition in frontier industries. Under those conditions, cutting working hours will be very challenging in the short term.
 | A guest post by
|