The human cost of Xiaomi’s rapid pivot from smartphones to EVs
The company still has a long way to go before it could break into the elite club of automakers
[SINGAPORE] Months before he dropped to the floor in agony while grocery shopping with his young son, Wang Peizhi stayed up all night frantically preparing Xiaomi’s flagship store for the launch of its first electric vehicle (EV).
Wang’s work had piled up after the company, led by billionaire co-founder Lei Jun, unveiled a bold plan to become the first tech firm to successfully shift into carmaking. Lei, 55, staked his reputation on the transition, a feat even Apple failed to achieve, vowing it was his “last entrepreneurial project”.
A key part of executing that vision was Xiaomi’s retail network, Wang’s responsibility. To compete with the likes of BYD and Tesla in China’s burgeoning EV market, the company had decided to overhaul its chain of retail outlets by converting stores designed for smartphones into showrooms to feature full-sized sedans and SUVs. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, Xiaomi fired around half the staff responsible for the effort, leaving about 10 people, according to a former employee and a current staff member, both of whom worked with Wang and asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The small team felt their workload sharply increase at the beginning of 2024, when the company raced to roll out EV stores in time for the launch of its signature SU7 sedan, the people said. Wang worked longer and longer hours as he took on the team’s biggest projects in addition to his duties, carrying out routine maintenance on the company’s web of stores, they said. Plus, he was based in Xiaomi’s headquarters in Beijing, making him more visible to top company brass.
In the first eight months of the year, he worked on at least 267 retail stores, often retrofitting stores with an area for EVs, according to a trove of internal documents, photos and WeChat messages reviewed by Bloomberg News. On Aug 25, less than three days after he collapsed in front of his son, he died of a heart attack at the age of 34.
Local authorities ruled that Wang’s death was not related to his job at Xiaomi. But his widow is convinced that his punishing work schedule contributed to his death.
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“He was treated just like a leaf: when it falls, people step on it without noticing its existence,” Luna Liu said.
She agreed to speak publicly for the first time since his death because she thinks his case deserves more attention. She also shared thousands of her late husband’s work-related WeChat messages out of concern that Chinese companies push their employees too hard, with little regard for their health and welfare.
Xiaomi had given Wang more responsibility over the years because he took his duties so seriously. He was in charge of some of the company’s most high-profile projects, including its flagship showroom just off Tiananmen Square. But he still had dozens of other projects to manage at the same time.
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Wang’s motivation for working long hours is complicated. People close to him said that he felt a strong sense of obligation and would take on tasks himself because there wasn’t anyone else who could share his duties. He also drove himself hard, keeping track of hundreds of projects and grinding for hours to make sure he delivered on what the company needed.
He was paid well by Chinese standards, bringing home about 600,000 yuan (S$109,762) a year, including stock options, according to his widow. But she said he lived under “immense mental strain” because he was caught between the demands of top company leaders and the realities on the ground.
“He was sandwiched between his bosses and the stores whenever there was an issue with one of the projects,” she said.
In response to a detailed request for comment from Bloomberg News, a spokesperson for Xiaomi said: “We are deeply saddened by the unfortunate passing of our colleague and extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends. At the same time, we do our utmost to provide support and assistance to our colleague’s family under the applicable laws and regulations.”
Xiaomi is not the only company pushing its employees to work long hours. Staff across China’s tech sector complain they spend all their time at the office. Several told Bloomberg News that overwork, defined by the World Health Organization as more than 55 hours a week, is prevalent in many top firms. Wang’s story offers a rare glimpse of the enormous pressure inside China’s tech companies. One reason is a renewed urgency to stay competitive in China’s increasingly crowded market, where battles for customers in sectors from EVs to e-commerce are red hot. Rivalry with the US in semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI) has also brought the culture to some state-affiliated companies.
Excessive work culture, dubbed “996” for the expectation to be in the office from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, is deeply rooted in China’s tech sector. A decade ago, it was driven by the belief that hard work would reap rewards as rapid economic growth created opportunities, according to Mary Gallagher, professor of global affairs at the University of Notre Dame. But now it’s more about national priorities and a sense of patriotic duty as China competes in chips, AI and EVs.
“These industries that are doing so well, including on export markets, and are so important to the confidence that Xi Jinping wants to see in the economy,” said Gallagher, author of Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State.
“There’s enormous pressure in those places.”
Lei’s pivot to EVs began with an initial investment of US$1.4 billion, followed by massive spending on nearly every corner of the supply chain, from batteries and chips to air suspension and sensors. In all, it pumped more than US$1.6 billion into more than 100 suppliers between 2021 and 2024, according to data compiled by Chinese analytics firm Zhangtongshe and Bloomberg.
As EV production was ramping up at the beginning of 2024, company leadership also turned their attention to boosting sales. Two months before Xiaomi launched the SU7, Wang took on even more work. He was sending WeChat messages to colleagues from early in the morning to late at night, with some of them sent from his home. On one particularly long day at the end of January, he asked about the installation of mirrors at an outlet around 2.30 am A few hours later, he pressed a furniture supplier to finish a project five times faster than originally quoted.
“At one point, he was shouldering the workload of seven or eight people. He said he was busy like a spinning top,” said Wang’s widow Liu. “Many times I told him, although you come back home every day, sometimes I feel I haven’t seen you for days.”
After the Chinese New Year holiday in February, Wang worked at a relentless pace, exchanging hundreds of photos and messages with colleagues about the flagship showroom in Beijing, according to the collection of documents reviewed by Bloomberg. As the location neared completion at the end of March, Wang spent all night there, toiling to fix the lighting system and charging poles in the basement. He also raced to get the floor reinforced after finding it had cracked under the weight of a car.
One evening, Xiaomi president Lu Weibing announced in a post on Chinese social media that he would make a long-awaited visit to the flagship store in Beijing the next morning. After sharing the news with a colleague, Wang worried about getting the showroom ready at short notice. “Tomorrow decides everything,” he wrote on WeChat.
His hard work paid off: About two weeks later, Lei lauded the flagship location as “one of the most iconic among our 59 stores nationwide.” The SU7 launch last March catapulted Xiaomi into China’s EV market. Costing 215,900 yuan, or about US$30,000, it comes in below the 219,800 yuan asking price for a BYD Han L and the 235,500 yuan price tag of a Tesla Model 3. The Porsche Taycan – the vehicle to which the SU7 bears an uncanny resemblance – starts at about US$100,000.
Since the unveiling, Xiaomi’s stock has soared about 200 per cent in Hong Kong. But the company still has a long way to go before it could break into the elite club of automakers. It has set a delivery target of 350,000 units in 2025, up from its previous goal of 300,000. By comparison, China’s top car brand, BYD Co., sold around 4.3 million EVs and hybrids last year, many overseas, while Tesla moved about 1.8 million vehicles globally.
Xiaomi has managed to “democratise technology” and create an image that has resonated well with Chinese consumers, said Bill Russo, founder and chief executive officer of Shanghai-based advisory firm Automobility.
“Xiaomi is a known consumer brand that makes technology affordable, and that’s been their value prop from the beginning for virtually every device that they manufacture,” said Russo. “Lei Jun is kind of a rock star in the perception of the Chinese consumer.”
In recent years, China has been gripped by a national debate over the need to improve work-life balance. Social media platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu have been flooded with posts – which are impossible to verify – about long working hours. The topic took on greater importance in recent years following a series of high-profile deaths attributed to overwork, with the ruling Chinese Communist Party voicing its support for protecting the rights of workers.
Work culture appeared to improve during the pandemic, when some tech staff were allowed to work flexible hours. The government also rolled out some efforts to improve working environments in an attempt to beat back the public outcry following a series of deaths attributed to overwork. Public officials held discussions and announced plans to improve working situations.
In 2021, Chinese authorities opened an investigation into working conditions at the e-commerce company PDD Holdings following the death of an employee in her early 20s. The employee collapsed while walking home with colleagues. Her death sparked a social media backlash against PDD and the relentless working schedules expected of its workers.
The following year, a content moderator at Bilibili, China’s largest anime streaming site, died from a brain haemorrhage. Both companies have denied wrongdoing. Neither PDD nor Bilibili responded to requests for comment.
China’s national labour laws cap standard working time at 44 hours per week. However, employers can negotiate with trade unions and employees to extend that. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that staff at Chinese companies have worked longer hours in recent years. Last year, the average workweek totalled 49 hours with no break, up slightly from 47.9 in 2022. (American full-time employees last year worked an average of 43 hours a week, according to a Gallup survey.)
This year, the government released an action plan to “regulate the unwholesome work culture”, pushing provincial governments to take a greater role in preventing excessive hours. “Local authorities are urged to better protect workers’ rights to rest and tighten supervision over employers’ behaviours of illegally lengthening employees’ working hours without permission,” state-owned outlet China Daily reported in March.
But the problem has not gone away. Alibaba Group Holding’s engineers cancelled vacations and worked through this year’s Chinese New Year holiday to play catch up after DeepSeek shocked the global tech industry with its low-cost, powerful AI model in January.
PDD, locked in a price war with Alibaba and JD.com, also made some staff cancel their holiday plans during the same period. But it offered overtime bonuses to those who stayed behind to keep their website running, said one employee in Shanghai, who asked for anonymity to discuss their schedule. The employee, in her mid-30s, said that she received a bonus of roughly 3,000 yuan after working four days during the holidays. Alibaba and PDD did not respond to requests for comment.
Another engineer, at Shanghai-based chip equipment maker Ueascend, said he was only able to take one day off per week since he joined the company last year. Team calls were sometimes scheduled on the few days he had off, and when urgent projects came in, he’d work from morning until 11 pm for days, said the 25-year-old, who also asked for anonymity to talk about their working hours. Staff at drone maker DJI and Apple supplier Desay Battery also claimed poor working conditions. Bloomberg News was unable to reach Ueascend. Desay Battery did not respond to requests for comment. A DJI spokesperson said their staff work an average of nine hours per day and regularly get a two-day weekend.
In April, Chinese media reported that Xiaomi was requiring employees to work at least 11.5 hours a day, and those who worked less than eight hours were told to submit a formal explanation. Xiaomi did not respond to questions about the media reports. A survey published last year by Chinese job hunting platform Maimai showed Xiaomi workers averaged 11.5 hours a day, among the longest in the country’s tech industry. Staff at ByteDance, Meituan and Tencent Holdings all clocked double-digit hours, according to the survey, which did not explain its methodology. In the US, the average workday spanned 8 hours 44 minutes, with just 5 per cent of employees working on weekends, according to data from workforce analytics company ActivTrak. ByteDance declined to comment, while Meituan and Tencent did not respond to questions from Bloomberg News.
Wang’s long hours did not go unnoticed. He was praised by his bosses for expanding Xiaomi’s network of EV showrooms, according to his internal performance review, which covered the first half of 2024. The company credited him with rolling out new stores “at a unified standard, with high efficiency and quality”, the review said.
In the weeks leading up to his death in August 2024, Wang worked on at least 80 stores, according to his WeChat messages. Most of the sites he visited were in Beijing, but he kept a frantic schedule, criss-crossing northeastern China. Only two team members were available to help him with a broad range of tasks that included renovation as well as supplier management and accounting, according to one of the former colleagues.
During a three-day trip at the beginning of the month, he visited at least 14 Xiaomi outlets in Harbin, Changchun and Shenyang. He made his last business trip on Aug 20, visiting at least three stores in Tianjin, about 30 minutes from Beijing by train or a 1.5-hour drive.
Then on Aug 22, Wang felt so weak he called in sick and went to the hospital for medical checks. While there, he received dozens of WeChat messages from staff at about five different outlets. He told a store manager in Shenyang he was sick and someone else would visit his projects that day. “Xiaomi’s employees are all warriors,” the manager replied, encouraging Wang to get better and including a crying facepalm emoji.
The work exchanges lasted until at least 4 pm. Later that day, he took the trip with his son to a grocery store. There, his heart seized up, briefly stopping the flow of blood to his brain, and he slumped to the floor. He was rushed to an intensive care unit by ambulance, his widow said. Less than three days later, he was dead. Bloomberg News reviewed a copy of Wang’s death certificate that listed acute myocardial infarction – commonly known as a heart attack – as the cause of his death.
Wang was in good health at the time of his death, had no pre-existing conditions and maintained an active lifestyle, his widow said. He underwent regular annual physical exams but missed his appointment in 2024 because of a scheduling conflict, she said. He would spend his time off with his family, going on hikes in the mountains around Beijing and accompanying his son to extracurricular activities, she and a colleague said. He regularly went on five-kilometre runs to ease the stress of his job, another colleague said.
Wang’s widow told Xiaomi she believed her husband had died from excessive work. The company reported the incident to local authorities, which determined that Wang’s death was not work related. According to Chinese guidelines, an employee is deemed to have suffered a work-related death only if they die within 48 hours of receiving treatment for an injury sustained on the job. The Beijing Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.
Xiaomi denied any wrongdoing. It later offered the family 50,000 yuan, about US$7,000, as a hardship payment, but no funds were paid out, she said. The company helped her access her husband’s investment portfolio, but later rescinded some of his stock options, she added. Days after her husband passed away, Liu took to Weibo to address Xiaomi’s boss directly. “I hope Lei can take a look at employee Wang Peizhi’s sudden death,” she wrote. “My husband contributed to the success of Xiaomi’s EVs. He was so tired because of too much pressure from work.”
Her posts gained little traction, with some users commenting that she was just seeking additional compensation from Xiaomi. By the end of the year, she stopped using Weibo. “It’s okay if I was misunderstood or insulted, but the company still owes me an apology,” she wrote in one of her final posts.
Within Xiaomi, Wang’s death was not widely reported, two of his former colleagues said. Zhang Jian, a Xiaomi executive in charge of nationwide stores at the time, hosted an internal meeting about Wang’s death, according to the current employee. He told colleagues that Wang had died from a heart attack and the company was talking to his family. No changes to the team’s working hours were made. (Eventually, Zhang was promoted to head the company’s EV sales in China.)
These days, the workload at the company varies by department. On Wang’s former team, tasks usually pile up at the end of the month, the current employee said. Another current Xiaomi employee who works on a different team in Beijing said they usually work between 50 and 60 hours per week and rarely go in on weekends. A separate staffer on the company’s smartphone research team said they work more than 50 hours per week, including occasional hours on Saturday and Sunday.
Wang’s widow said he left his family with debts totalling around four million yuan, including the mortgage on their house. His life insurance policy, provided by Xiaomi, disbursed a one-time payment of about 800,000 yuan.
At home in Beijing, she has tried to piece together the memories of her late husband by organising his WeChat chat logs – most of which are related to his work. But she does not have access to a separate app he used for internal Xiaomi messages, leaving the full picture of his job responsibilities unknown.
What she is sure of is that she did not see her husband often during his final months. “The work took all his time when he was needed as a father, as a husband,” she said, adding that Wang rarely returned home before 9 pm and even then his phone kept buzzing with work messages. “Almost every time he came back from work, our son was either already asleep or just about to go to bed.”
One of the last messages Wang sent was a desperate plea for a contractor to work faster.
“What I signed up for was a life or death commitment,” Wang wrote.
“Don’t leave me hanging.” BLOOMBERG
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