The recent deaths of two young employees of e-commerce star Pinduoduo Inc. have raised concerns that the company may be exploiting its employees at the expense of their health, deepening criticism of the Chinese tech sector’s punishing work culture.
In January, an engineer surnamed Tan who worked in Shanghai for Pinduoduo’s recently established payment service Duoduo Wallet, jumped to his death in his hometown of Changsha, the capital of central China’s Hunan province.
That case thrust the Shanghai-based company back into a spotlight that had shone on it less than two weeks earlier, when a 22-year-old woman working for its online grocery shopping service Duo Duo Maicai in Urumqi, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, suddenly died after working late.
Duoduo Wallet and Duo Duo Maicai are two of Pinduoduo’s new businesses that have grown rapidly. But the pressure of keeping the business expanding in China’s ultra-competitive e-commerce sector has fallen in great part on the employees.
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Related: How Workers Got Left Out of China’s Internet Boom
Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com)
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