Pinduoduo faces growing PR storm over death of young worker after conflicting public statements on tragedy
- PDD’s first public statement expressed sadness at the death and condolences for the family but a social media post triggered public backlash
- Young worker’s death has sparked renewed debate on long-hours culture in the tech industry
China’s social e-commerce giant Pinduoduo has found itself caught in a growing public relations crisis after conflicting public statements in response to the death of an employee, who collapsed on the way home after working long hours.
PDD confirmed on Monday that a 22-year-old employee, a woman surnamed Zhang, collapsed at around 1:30am on December 29 while walking home from work with colleagues and later died in a hospital. The case sparked an investigation into the company by the Shanghai authorities, criticism from China’s state broadcaster CCTV and renewed discussion on social media about the notorious “996” long-hours work culture at tech companies.
PDD’s first public statement expressed sadness at the death, condolences for the family, and included pleas from Zhang’s father not to embroil her death in controversy. However, a social media post expressing different sentiments prompted a backlash from netizens, with some calling the company “cold-blooded”.
An image, appearing to be a screenshot from Pinduoduo’s official account on China’s Quora-like platform Zhihu, went viral on Monday and showed an answer to a question from a netizen asking for people’s thoughts on Zhang’s death and the company’s responsibilities.
“Look at people in the underclass: which of them is not exchanging life for money? I have never thought of this as a problem of capital, it is more a problem of society. We are living in a time where people hustle at the expense of their lives. You can choose a comfortable life but you have to accept the consequences of comfortable living. People can control how much effort they make – we all can,” the post, under the PDD official account, stated.
PDD at first said the Zhihu screenshot was fake but Zhihu issued a statement on Monday evening confirming it was written under PDD’s official account but was later deleted. PDD then published another statement explaining that it was written by an employee from a third-party company that manages Pinduoduo’s social media accounts, who was expressing a personal opinion and had failed to switch to his personal account.
