Meituan

Meituan advances digital inclusivity for the visually impaired through its Visualising Digitalisation initiative. The programme helped nearly 7,000 visually impaired merchants digitalise their business, leading to a 143% increase in their online order volume.

Meituan contributes to the development of intermediate digital skills by partnering with others to teach and share e-commerce knowledge and cases with rural dwellers.

The company follows industry norms through its security incident response team and ISO 27001 certification. It also considers data privacy a key topic in its materiality analysis and has a group privacy policy.

The company partners with universities, think tanks and scientific institutions on research related to sustainable innovation. It also supports innovation in the tech start-up ecosystem by providing venture capital investments.

No evidence was found that Meituan has programmes that aim to contribute to inclusive access to digital technologies. The company can demonstrate how it supports universal and affordable access to digital technologies for vulnerable groups and digital inclusivity for women and girls. Meituan should also indicate how it distributes the wealth it creates among its shareholders and disclose its indirect economic impact.

Given its reach throughout China, Meituan can play a greater role in supporting basic and technical digital skills development and school connectivity among vulnerable groups and in disadvantaged areas. Additionally, the company can consider carrying out a third-party assessment of the impact of its existing programmes for basic and intermediate digital skills development. It can also report information on its specific contribution to these programmes.

Meituan provides limited evidence of activities relating to promoting safe and secure use of digital technologies. The company can better demonstrate how it monitors, remedies and reports cybersecurity incidents and mitigates digital risks and harms to children. The company also has scope to make a high-level commitment to child online safety.

There is little evidence of Meituan supporting open, inclusive and ethical innovation. The company can demonstrate how it practices open innovation, collaborates on big data for sustainable development, and applies inclusive and ethical principles in its research and development (R&D) activities.

No company policies or commitments related to respect for human rights were found in the public domain. There is no public evidence of Meituan committing to respect the ILO core labour rights, nor does the company disclose a process to identify, assess and mitigate the salient human rights risks associated with its own operations and with its business relationships. While the company has a grievance mechanism for its workers to raise human rights concerns and complaints, it is unclear if complainants have the option to remain anonymous. Furthermore, Meituan does not have a similar grievance mechanism for external stakeholders.

While Meituan complies with health and safety regulations, it does not have a public commitment to respecting worker health and safety. Similarly, although the company monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships, it does not require that its business relationships commit to worker health and safety. The company discloses no relevant information in reference to living wages, collective bargaining or working hours. For example, the company does not specify that workers are not required to work more than the regular and overtime hours. Further, Meituan does not have a public commitment or time-bound targets regarding gender equality and women’s empowerment. In relation to workforce diversity, while Meituan discloses a breakdown of employee by age group, it has scope to provide employee breakdowns for other indicators of diversity, such as gender.

Meituan does not publicly state that it prohibits bribery and corruption, but it does include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships. However, the company does not disclose any relevant information in relation to tax, such as a global tax strategy or its income tax payments for individual tax jurisdictions. Furthermore, Meituan lacks disclosure across the board in relation to lobbying and political engagement. For instance, the company does not state that it does not make political contributions, and it does not disclose its lobbying expenditures.