China and the European Union have one thing in common: the youth unemployment rate. 14.5% of Chinese young people have no job, while in the European Union the figure is slightly higher, 14.7%. The difference, of course, is that about 448 million people live in the European Union, while in China there are more 1,400 million inhabitants.
Not finding work feels bad to anyone, but in China both family and social pressure is huge. It is a very competitive market and the young man is expected to find work, do everything possible to find it: training, studies, practices, temporary jobs, whatever. Not working or worse, not looking for work, has a negative impact on social perception. In that context, the emergence of a phenomenon of the most peculiar makes sense: pay for pretending you work.
Image | Marc Mueller
China and work. When a student graduates, what is expected of him is to work, be useful and not depend on the family. It is possible that this is not immediately possible. Some students can opt for a “deliberate transition” (慢就业), that is, take time while actively form and explore options; Others can do a postgraduate (考研) or study oppositions (考公); and others, access a temporary job, support the family business, etc., while looking for something more stable.
It is expected, in short, that the job search is active and proactive. Not doing so has negative effects on social perception. Depending on parents without being contributing or looking for anything (啃老, we could literally translate it as “bite the old” or more Castilianized, being a Nini) is something that is frowned upon. But situations are not always conducive and, given social pressure, it may be easier to pretend than you work while looking for work than giving explanations.
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Work looking for work. Given this complex social and labor situation, companies have emerged in some areas of China that rent a place to go to work when you have no job. One of them is intend to work Company, which for 3.5 euros per day allows access to a false office with computers, Internet access, meeting rooms, etc. Like a coworkingmore or less. These companies are announced on social networks such as Xiaohongshu.
And what to go? There are several reasons. The BBC echoes the testimony of Shui Zhou, a 30 -year -old person who goes to the “office” to do networking, train his discipline and, in some way, relax his parents. Right now he is taking the opportunity to improve his skills with AI.
Others such as Xiaowen Tang, a newly graduated, 23 years old, pointed out because their university has a kind of unwritten rule: if you do not send your contract or proof that you are doing practices a year after graduate, they do not give you the diploma. He pointed to the company, took a photo of the office and used it as proof.
Workers in a smartphones factory | Image: WorldOfSoftware
Another Cantonese girl, whose identity remains in anonymity, left her work in 2024 due to the pressure of the financial world, explains to El País. He pointed to a false office because he does not dare to tell his family the truth. He started going to coffee shops, but for 400 yuan monthly he can go to a lie office to spend the day while looking for work.
A shell. “To pretend that it works is a shelter that young people find for themselves, creating a slight distance with respect to the majority society and giving themselves a little space,” Dr. Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany in Germany, tells the BBC. The same thinks the owner of Pretend to Work Company, a 30 -year -old boy who affirms that “what I sell is not a job, but the dignity of not being a useless person.”
As reported, 40% of its customers are recent graduates who need to try their tutors who are doing practices. Some also go to flee from family pressure. Others are autonomous or digital nomads that understand this space as a coworking. The Middle Ages is 30 years.
The other face of the currency. The pandemic made a mella in youth employment in China, which in 2023, after years of employability record, was estimated at 46.5% according to Zhang Dandan, professor of economy at the University of Beijing. So disastrous was the situation that the statistics were stopped. The country faces 14.5% youth unemployment, a figure that probably grows when the 12.2 million new graduates try to enter the market. The pressure to get a job is such that, in recent years, a movement that pursues the opposite has emerged.
Instead of being ambitious, reaching the extreme and doing work the central axis of life that once proposed the 996 day (and now seems to be changing), the movement 躺平, literally “lie down”, promotes the opposite: criticism of extreme competition, work just to fulfill, bring a slower rhyth of life, enjoy a little more even if that implies a work of less relevance or a lower salary. It is in China what we met here as the silent resignation.
Cover image | Marc Mueller
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