China’s young unemployed ‘pretending’ to work in libraries, cafes

Kitty Wang, Jenny Tang and Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin and Yitong Wu and Kit Sung for RFA Cantonese2024.11.16

Read RFA coverage of this topic in Chinese.

Rampant youth unemployment in China has left millions of young people floundering, living at home, relying on delivery jobs or, in a growing trend, “pretending to go to work.”

In posts on the video-sharing platform Douyin, young people are creating a routine where none exists out of sessions spent studying or applying for jobs in libraries and internet cafes.

Some are even paying for “study rooms” to get them out of the house and give structure to their days, sometimes while they study for highly competitive civil service entrance exams, according to state media reports.

The situation has spawned a hashtag on social media, #IPretendedToGoToWorkToday, with young people posting short videos to Douyin about what they do all day.

In one video under the hashtag, one young woman offers a tour of her local county town, including the railway station, local shopping streets and scenic spots, but conceals her identity with a computer-generated animation where her head should be.

In another, a young woman hangs out on the stairwell and roof of her apartment building, apparently hiding from relatives and neighbors who think she’s at work.

Living at home

A Nov. 5 feature in Banyuetan magazine, under the aegis of state news agency Xinhua, found that it’s extremely common for people aged up to 40 in rural areas to still be living back home with their parents, who sometimes hand over money from their pensions to support them.

The situation is at odds with the Communist Party’s pledge to “comprehensively revitalize rural areas,” the report said.

“This phenomenon of relying on one’s parents is ultimately an employment or job security issue,” YouTube commentator Lying Uncle Ping said in a response to the article. “The key is to provide employment, and better quality jobs.”

He said at least rural families who still have land have a way to feed themselves, should they fall on hard times.

A former rural resident of the northern province of Hebei who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals said not everyone in rural areas still has access to land, however.

“In developed areas in the south, people can go back home to work in local factories,” Wang said. “In the north, where I live, there are basically no factories in rural areas, so farming is the only option.”

Yet some areas have seen most of their agricultural land repurposed for development in recent decades, he said.

“Especially in the central regions, where people have less than one mu of land [per household],” Wang said. “They have no way to support even a basic level of existence from the land.”

A young man from a rural village in the southern province of Guangdong who used the pseudonym Marginal Person told Radio Free Asia in writing that many young people are living off their parents where he lives, because the economy is so bad.

Asked what they’re doing, he replied: “Working as food delivery riders, growing vegetables and playing the lottery.”

“There are several ways to play, and the odds range from 1:9500 to 1:950 to 1:95,” he said. “Some people here have won hundreds of thousands of yuan, bought apartments and gotten married, but there are also people who have lost everything.”

He said many feel embarrassment and shame about their situation, however.

“Takeout deliveries in my town are all being done by young people from other towns, because they’re afraid of running into people they know and being laughed at,” he said.

Renting study space

In a separate article, Banyuetan also interviewed young people in urban areas who are renting out desks in shared study spaces rather than stay home all day doing nothing.

Rented study space is particularly popular among young people preparing for civil service or postgraduate entrance exams, the article said, adding that the market will expand to more than 10 million spaces by next year.

But unemployed young people are also picking up on the trend, and renting spaces just to look busy, and to give themselves a place outside of the family home, away from parental criticism or constant inquiries about how the job hunt is going, it said.

Desks can be rented by the hour, day, month or year, costing around 500 yuan (US$70) a month, and come equipped with chair, lamp, charging sockets and a locker for belongings.

They’re so popular that vacant desks are getting very hard to find, especially in more popular areas, the report said.

The jobless rate for 16-to-24-year-olds in China, excluding students, fell to 17.6% in September, compared with 18.8% in the previous month.

Ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping published an article in the ideological magazine Qiushi on Oct. 31 calling for “full, high-quality employment” to “promote the sense of gain, happiness and security of the majority of workers,” but without offering detailed measures.

But it did highlight youth unemployment as a priority.

“We should insist on the employment of young people like college graduates as a top priority, take multiple measures to promote the employment of migrant workers … and help groups in difficulty such as the long-term unemployed,” Xi wrote, calling for an end to employment discrimination and unpaid wages.

Worried about unrest

Political commentator Ji Feng said the government is clearly worried that high employment could lead to social unrest.

“Ordinary people were left with a sense of grievance after the economy collapsed,” Ji said. “The Communist Party is worried about that sense of grievance, and about social unrest.”

“But if they don’t make radical changes, they’re going to scare off private and foreign companies,” he said. “If they don’t make a U-turn, they’ll be sunk.”

Financial commentator He Jiangbing also blamed the economic direction taken by China under Xi.

“Private companies are the main employers, and they’re overwhelmed, because state-owned enterprises can’t solve the employment problem,” He said, calling for a return to better trade relations and a return to the export-driven economic growth of the pre-pandemic era.

“If it can’t export, then a company won’t create new job opportunities; it’ll be laying off staff,” he said. “In such a situation, all this talk of employment is just that — talk.”

Germany-based social media influencer Great Firewall Frog said Xi’s policies have drained vitality from the Chinese economy.

“It’s Xi Jinping himself who’s the problem, the reason the Chinese economy is ruined and the labor market is depressed,” he said. “There’s no freedom or vitality these days … when a single official document can destroy an entire industry, a wrong word on WeChat can get a person fired or imprisoned.”

“How can he say stuff like ‘promoting high quality, full employment’? It’s hilarious,” he said. “Dude, the guy should do stand-up.”

Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster