Photo/Zhang Jian (NBD)

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com (HK09618) on Monday launched its "JD.com Youth City" project, according to the WeChat account of the company.

Under the project, JD.com aims to build nearly 4,000 self-owned rental apartments for employees, including more than 1,000 apartments for interns, as well as kindergartens, swimming pools, leisure and fitness areas. The total investment of this project is expected to exceed 6 billion yuan.

Opposite the headquarters of JD.com in Beijing, the land plot was bought by the company at 3 billion yuan in Feb 2023. Currently, the average price of second-hand houses nearby is more than 60,000 yuan per square meter. 

It is learned that JD.com has built more than 25,000 employee apartments in various offices and logistics parks across China, and has invested more than 22 billion yuan in improving the living conditions of employees.

It is worth mentioning that in November last year, its founder Richard Liu said in an internal letter that JD.com would also spend 10 billion yuan to set up a housing security fund to provide interest-free loans for grass-roots employees.

Combined with investments in the "housing security fund" last year, JD's expenditure on housing security has become the largest investment in the employee welfare of the company in recent years, as well as the largest investment in the employee welfare of the industry in recent years.