Tens of thousands of Chinese construction workers in Israel have refused to comply with the CCP’s March 2026 evacuation order, choosing to remain on job sites within range of Iranian rocket fire rather than return to China’s collapsing labor market. The workers’ refusal, captured in videos that spread rapidly across social media, amounts to a public repudiation of economic conditions inside China. “I’d rather be bombed to death than starve to death,” one worker said. Another framed the choice in starker terms: “We want freedom. We want to live with dignity.”
After the U.S.-Israeli coalition struck Iran, Tehran retaliated repeatedly against Israel, causing casualties and property damage. The CCP’s embassy in Israel responded on March 25 by announcing an organized evacuation and calling on all Chinese citizens to return or transfer out as soon as possible. An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Chinese workers are employed in Israel’s construction industry. Because wages there are far higher than anything available back home, the vast majority refused to leave.
In a video posted on the X platform, one construction worker said a friend had notified him about the evacuation. Speaking directly to camera, he said: “I’m working here, everything is normal. If there’s an air raid siren, you take cover. We’re used to it by now. I hope everyone won’t worry too much. People have asked whether I’ll go back. I’ll tell you: I’ll visit family eventually, but I won’t go back right now. Life isn’t just about having enough to eat. We want freedom. We want to live with dignity.”
In another video filmed inside a workers’ dormitory, one man asked his roommate whether he planned to leave during the evacuation. The roommate replied: “We could get bombed to death here, but we can’t go back and starve to death!” The first man laughed: “Nobody wants to go back!”
Chinese internet users called the workers’ refusal ‘the true will of the people’
The videos triggered a wave of online commentary that reinforced the workers’ message. “This is the real voice of the people,” one commenter wrote. “They’d rather live within rocket range than go back to that kind of life.” Another said: “The reality is that Israel is hundreds of times safer than China under the CCP.” A third wrote: “Chinese people living abroad, no matter how hard their lives are, are still better off than staying in China.”
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Chinese construction workers in Israel reported earning between 30,000 and 80,000 yuan per month, roughly $4,100 to $11,000, for 12-hour shifts on job sites. Israeli employers never withhold or delay wages, the workers said. Demand for these positions is so high that applicants must enter a lottery or pay agency fees ranging from 50,000 to over 100,000 yuan just to secure a spot.
One worker said: “I spent 80,000 or 90,000 to get here. As a carpenter, I make 1,800 yuan a day, 45,000 a month. I’m not going home until I’ve made two million. I got injured a while back and had surgery. The hospital was excellent. They arranged a Chinese interpreter for me. The doctors were great.”
Another worker had been in the home renovation trade in China before losing his job. To support his family, he came to Israel to lay tile on construction sites, earning 60,000 to 70,000 yuan a month. He hoped to stay several more years. “Laying tile, I make two to three thousand a day,” he said. “In five years, that’s two million. Back home I could barely support myself, let alone my kid and my parents. The pressure was enormous. Here, if I work seven or eight years, maybe ten, I can earn enough to retire on.”
Chinese state-owned enterprises also operate construction projects in Israel with a worker age limit of 60, attracting many older laborers. Their monthly pay is lower, under 30,000 yuan, but includes insurance and airfare.
One woman whose husband works construction in Israel said: “My husband was born in the ’70s. At his age the burden is heavy: parents above, children below. He’s a rebar worker and has been on Israeli job sites for over two years. There are bombings every day. Of course I worry. We video-call daily. Whenever he has a free moment he calls several times.”
China’s 2026 unemployment crisis sent workers home days after the Lunar New Year
China’s economy has deteriorated further in 2026, with unemployment spreading across industries. In early March, just days after the Lunar New Year holiday, a wave of migrant workers who had traveled to southeastern coastal cities to find work began streaming home again. Many said they simply could not find jobs and had no choice but to “lie flat,” Chinese internet slang for giving up on striving.
In a video circulating online from March 8, large crowds of workers were shown boarding trains out of Shanghai after failing to find employment. The man filming laughed bitterly and said: “The first batch heading home for the 2027 New Year, look at how many people!” One commenter asked: “Back already?” Others replied: “Yeah, no choice. It’s just too hard to find work out here.” “Don’t scare me, I’m still on the train.” “This isn’t going home for the holiday. This is going home to lie flat.”
China’s economy has been caught in a self-reinforcing downward spiral. Foreign investment has fled, businesses have shut down, shopping malls have closed, and unemployment has surged. During peak dining hours, restaurants sit empty. On weekends, streets are deserted.
State-owned and private companies alike have been withholding wages. With jobs unstable, nobody dares spend. With nobody spending, businesses close. With businesses closing, jobs disappear. The cycle has fed on itself, accelerating the contraction across China’s major cities.
Laid-off white-collar workers and migrant laborers are sleeping under overpasses across China
China’s unemployment crisis has pushed a growing number of workers into homelessness in the country’s biggest cities. In June 2025, a Chinese blogger visited Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and other major cities and documented what he found: overpasses, subway entrances, and public squares had become makeshift shelters for rising numbers of people with nowhere else to go.
The vast majority were not beggars or alcoholics. Most were white-collar workers or migrant laborers who had lost their jobs after factories relocated or companies downsized. In Shenzhen the problem was especially severe. The area outside Luohu Square was filled with homeless workers sleeping in the open. Under pedestrian overpasses in the Futian central business district, at subway exits, and in back alleys behind office towers, people slept on flattened cardboard boxes.
The same pattern appeared in Shanghai, where 24-hour McDonald’s locations had become informal shelters. Staff generally did not evict people, tacitly allowing them to sleep inside overnight.
In Beijing, the main concentrations were around train stations, station plazas, underground pedestrian tunnels, and overpasses. Beijing’s homeless population was more diverse than in the southern cities: unemployed white-collar workers, migrant laborers, job seekers, petitioners from other provinces who had come to appeal to the central government, and bankrupt small traders.
Beyond these visible cases, many more people were sleeping in internet cafes or in their cars, or trading odd jobs for a temporary place to stay. They formed a growing underclass at the margins of urban life, invisible in official statistics and outside the reach of any social safety net.