The country reported an unemployment rate of 18.1% among 16-24 year-olds in February, up 1.4 percentage points since December. This phenomenon is in part “a form of protest” against the social expectations placed on children, says Jin. But she also points to China’s stubbornly high youth unemployment rate. (China’s birth rate plunged during the COVID pandemic, and statisticians reported the country’s first decline in population since the 1960s earlier this year.)
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Some young Chinese are even leaving high-paying, yet demanding, professional careers in favor of lower-skilled and lower-paying manual labor, citing better hours and work-life balance, according to the New York Times.Ĭhinese couples are also delaying marriage and having children, leading to a rise in “ double-income, no kids” households. also challenging career expectations, most famously expressed last year in the TikTok-driven concept of “ quiet quitting“) (These Chinese social media trends are similar to younger employees in the U.S. One of the most prominent terms has been “lying flat,” which reflects a belief among some Chinese young professionals that it’s better to emphasize personal comfort than career or family success. Over the past several years, the country’s young flocked to social media to reject expectations on careers, work and family. The return of Chinese discretionary spending may reflect changing attitudes towards work-life balance, social mobility, and individual comfort among China’s younger generations. Chinese leaders have declared consumption a “ topmost priority,” but slowing consumer inflation might indicate that overall consumer spending is losing steam. Consumer confidence is now back to where it was before a two-month lockdown in Shanghai, which ran from April to June 2022, which sparked months of COVID lockdowns and other disruptions that dragged down the economy.Ĭhinese retail sales grew 3.5% year-on-year during January and February, beating expectations. “There’s a lot to expect in terms of a big rebound in consumption, but only in certain types,” she says.Ĭonsumer sentiment in China has recovered to the same level it was last March, according to Morning Consult’s most recent Global Consumer Confidence Report, released Friday. LSE professor Jin thinks that discretionary spending will rebound in the immediate term, yet durables consumption may take a while to recover as confidence rebuilds. Now, however, multinational companies are seeing sales recover. Companies like Apple and Starbucks reported falling retail sales in China, as consumers stayed home amid the country’s record outbreak. The return of consumptionĬhina’s COVID chaos in December and January helped drag down corporate earnings. Previous generations bought less and saved more, fostering an economy fueled by manufacturing and cheap labor and turning it into the “factory of the world.” But today’s young Chinese, with different expectations on individual comfort, could be, to paraphrase former leader Deng Xiaoping, developing a version of conspicuous consumption with Chinese characteristics. That changing attitude could be a new twist in the story of China’s economic development. “They don’t see life as a matter of ruthless survival.” “These young people like leisure more,” Keyu Jin, associate professor of economics at the London School of Economics and author of the forthcoming The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, told Fortune. Youth culture in China is changing its attitudes towards work and personal comfort-such as the social media trend of “lying flat” that emerged over the last several years-and that may end up changing the country’s economy in permanent ways.
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