Alibaba, JD.com, Meituan

When Shanghai cast its 25 million people into lockdown over COVID in April, residents had little time to stock up on essentials. But more notice wouldn’t have prepared them for what lay ahead: restrictions that trapped them in their homes for two months straight. The city government wasn’t ready for a lockdown of such magnitude either, and it struggled to get food and basic goods to residents. In the end, officials turned to China’s delivery giants—Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan—to ferry items to a city in need. Alibaba’s food delivery platform Ele.me established special services for the elderly, the disabled, and families with young children. JD.com relocated 5,000 workers to Shanghai from other cities to meet demand that peaked at 1.5 million orders fulfilled per day. Meituan introduced a community buying feature that let neighbors order in bulk, ultimately delivering over 70 million items during the lockdown. For weeks the companies’ workers, zipping around on motorbikes, were among the only people on Shanghai’s vacant streets.