00:02Hungry Panda is a popular delivery service for food, particularly for Asian eateries
00:08and it's very well liked by a lot of Chinese diasporas across the West. It was founded
00:13in the UK but it also operates in Australia, the US and several other countries. Now, what
00:18we've seen over the last five years in particular is a pretty persistent pattern of disputes
00:23between Hungry Panda and some of its riders. A number of riders have said that the algorithm
00:28that's used by Hungry Panda is not transparent, that it's opaque, that in some instances they've
00:33had the pay that they've been offered cut for no apparent reason and most recently over
00:39the last couple of months a group of Hungry Panda drivers, or riders rather, have been
00:44using a Chinese language messaging app, WeChat, very popular, to discuss taking action, potentially
00:51for example stopping work during this Lunar New Year period. So that's the background to
00:57this latest dispute which has taken a rather surprising turn in the last couple of days.
01:03Yeah, and so what's happened with these riders in Australia and what's the intervention been
01:08from Chinese police?
01:10So Chinese police, we're told by a number of the riders who were in this group, basically
01:17started calling around the participants in this group chat earlier this month, basically
01:23saying, what are you discussing? Are you looking at protesting? What are the plans? And warning
01:28them in very clear language not to step out of line. In one instance, one of the riders said
01:34that they were threatened with arrest if they should return to China. It's worth noting here,
01:38Joe, that many of the riders, and certainly I think most of them, most of the riders in this
01:44group are not Australian permanent residents or Australian citizens. They're often Chinese
01:50nationals who are here living in Australia, often working whilst they're on temporary visas.
01:56And is Hungry Panda a Chinese company?
01:59No, it's actually a UK-based company, although I think it was started by a Chinese international
02:05student when he was first in the United Kingdom. But it's a UK-listed, not a Chinese-listed company.
02:14Nonetheless, it seems that what's happened is that a number of these riders have got calls
02:20that have been made by the Chinese police. Let's take a listen to Wang Choying. She said she received
02:27three phone calls from police in mainland China. This is what she had to say.
02:34He told me that you should still try to avoid taking part in the protest in Australia. He
02:39said they could arrest me when I returned to China if I participated.
02:44Now, the federal government has waded in, or at least the Labor Senator Tony Sheldon has waded
02:50in, saying that any allegations of foreign interference are unacceptable and concerning.
02:56Hungry Panda, as you mentioned, has said it has got nothing to do with these calls. And
03:01to be clear, the ABC has no evidence that there was any contact over this particular dispute,
03:07or about these protests, between Hungry Panda and the Chinese police. They say the most likely
03:14explanation is just that Chinese police picked up on this chatter and took their own action.
03:19academics we've spoken to say that Chinese police increasingly are showing a desire to regulate
03:25the behaviour of Chinese nationals overseas. But this is an unusual case, because often
03:30these sort of phone calls are made in connection to perhaps more sensitive political issues.
03:35This is an industrial, on the face of it, an industrial dispute. So it is an unusual and potentially
03:41worrying turn of events to see this sort of pressure applied by Chinese police to Chinese nationals
03:47here in Australia.
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