Editor’s note: Like the U.S. this year and Japan in early 2000s — where economic indicators from GDP to the stock market point upward, it’s not necessarily translated to optimism on the ground. This reported essay sheds light on individuals in China behind these numbers.
About the author: Wanqing Chen is a multimedia journalist and writer focusing on gender, labor, and economy. Previously, she worked with the Associated Press. Before transitioning into journalism, she worked as an equity research analyst and holds a BSc and MSc in Financial Engineering. [Follow her Substack]
Zhu Yanping starts his day at 8 a.m., riding his scooter to a client’s home to clean appliances. After leaving his hometown in Jiangxi province last year, the husband and father has been living with three roommates in the outskirts of Shanghai.
“Finding work is harder this year than last,” the 37-year-old said. “But I can do more. I can take on house cleaning too.” He earns around 8,000 yuan ($1142) a month, 30% less than Shanghai’s average monthly income, and sends back most of it to his family. Before moving to Shanghai, Zhu had worked at a solar energy factory in Xinyu for more than a decade, until the company went bankrupt.
This year, the stock market surged even as macroeconomic growth slowed. Shanghai’s Composite index rose above the 4,000-point mark for the first time since 2015 in late October. Some overseas fund managers expect more inflows into China’s equity market in 2026.
Analysts attribute the rally to a confluence of factors, including positive policy signals, U.S.-China talks, and investors channeling household savings into equities amid a prolonged downturn in the real estate sector. Optimism about China’s advances in AI, often dubbed the “DeepSeek moment”, also helped lift market sentiment throughout the year. Still, some analysts question how long the market rally will be sustained under weak fundamentals.
The government acknowledged the “paradox of strong supply and weak domestic demand” at the Central Economic Work Conference in December, but what sits behind is not that people are unwilling to spend, but that their low disposable income and inadequate social protections are making them eager to protect what they have.
Across more than 10 cities and towns I visited this year — Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Qingdao, Ruili, Pu’er, Baoshan, Mangshi and Xishuangbanna — I spoke with over 50 residents from different socio-economic backgrounds, and across all walks of life.
I see different Chinas, and the ways ordinary people including migrant workers, office employees, scholars and local officials exercise their agency. The vast disparities in how people live across city tiers make me rethink what lies behind labels such as “weak demand” and “involution”, and what cannot be priced into markets.
China’s youth unemployment stood at 16.9% in late November, down from 17.3% in the previous month, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. More than 3.8 million people took the civil service exam in November, setting a record high level. On average, around 74 candidates compete for one position.
Contrary to how it’s commonly interpreted, “lying flat” does not reflect reality but is a joke among graduates. They joke about this aspirational status as they pursue a postgraduate degree or a job of any kind, from gig work to stable jobs in civil service and state-owned enterprises.
In Shanghai, I met a 22-year-old graduate from Wuhan. Her last job was a three-month marketing internship in the theater industry that she loved.
“They called it ‘marketing’, but I was doing it all — social media, stage work, coordination, and even cleaning,” she said. She worked six days a week, which was normal in Wuhan, and earned little, which was also normal but unsustainable. She quit in August and has been searching for a job across Wuhan, Hangzhou, and Shanghai ever since.
Similar constraints in the job market also affect Xu Borui, a postgraduate student in her final year at the prestigious Peking University.
Xu doesn’t believe she could follow a conventional path of being a corporate employee or civil servant. “It’s mapped out to the end, and it makes me feel a bit hopeless,” she said. As a transgender person, Xu said her gender identity is “not accepted” by the university and the wider society, and this deepens her sense of uncertainty.
Once ranked the country’s top student with a passion for history, she said she felt lost. In September, she took a leave of absence and returned to her hometown Mudanjiang, a far northeastern city bordering Russia.
While she still has other options, many others believe they don’t. China’s most competitive post in civil service this year is an immigration officer role in Ruili, where 7,591 applicants were approved to compete for this single opening, according to Beijing News.
Post-COVID, while certain indicators appear to have returned to normal – service consumption standing out in particular – other things have changed for good.
For Liu, an experienced retail investor in Shanghai, the stock market index may have returned to its level from 10 years ago, but sentiments are different. She thinks many investors like her stay in the market to “maintain optimism”, not to make money, as they are reluctant to invest in other sectors such as real estate.
For those who have little, even seeking optimism is a privilege. Like many migrant workers, the home appliance cleaner Zhu’s biggest worry is the lack of pension and social insurance.
He earns around 200 to 300 yuan a day from taking orders on several gig platforms, but it’s not sustainable. His immediate goal is to secure a new job with insurance, he said.
Zhu is still young, but living without a safety net means he could end up becoming one of the elderly migrant workers who still live day by day. After COVID, the sight of them showing up at traffic junctions in the wee hours across China started gaining wide attention online and in the media. He cannot afford to live like that for the sake of his family.
“Resilience” is not a word people use in everyday life, but it describes how many carry on regardless of circumstances.
Like Zhu, my cleaning lady in Shanghai is also overworked but eager to work more. She works nearly 10 hours every day, and only takes one day off each week.
“I feel like I’m racing against time,” the 42-year-old former baker and small business owner told me. Before closing down her pandemic-ridden bakery in suburban Shanghai last year, she had to “worry about everything: leftover bread, budgets, accounting, and more.” She is happier now that she has left the industry she entered at 14.
In Ruili, the border city that endured China’s strictest lockdowns given its proximity to the “super-spreader state” Myanmar, I met a 49-year-old businessman who moved there before COVID. After the pandemic dampened his goal to make a fortune selling jade, he turned to selling cross-border trade goods on his own livestreaming channel. “I switched simply because the jade business has declined,” he said. He previously went bankrupt and divorced in his hometown Jiangxi.
The effects of the pandemic have lingered, yet people say they are moving on.
Earlier this year in Wuhan, a retired local official recalled his life during the city’s lockdown in 2020 five years later, and shared why he believes many people seem to have “forgotten” the pandemic.
“Chinese people are resilient,” he said. “After living through the pandemic, ordinary people think differently about life now. Enjoy what you can, eat, drink, have fun.”
A factory worker said she often talks with her husband at night and encourages each other. “When we have money, we spend a bit more; when we don’t, we spend less,” she said.
“We’re not fragile. We can eat bitterness.” 🔚
Makes me so sad about the fact that Chinese are resilient.
Now, talk with young people or small business owners in the US--it's just as bad or worse. Most of Europe is distinctly worse.