Shanghai's Economic Powerhouse in Crisis: 6 New Abnormalities Reported

The glory of the past is gone. Shanghai's economy deteriorates. Six unusual phenomena reported. Many people in mainland China have sold watches and gold bars, only to have their bank cards frozen. Since the beginning of this year, abnormal phenomena unlike those in the past have repeatedly appeared in Shanghai, resonating widely on social media. Recently, six abnormal phenomena in Shanghai have once again circulated on social media. Six more abnormal phenomena were reported in Shanghai. First, business in most physical stores is declining. In many shopping malls, there are more salespeople than customers, and salespeople are often seen live-streaming in the store to sell goods. Second, many office buildings and office parks in Shanghai are now vacant. As long as you are willing to rent, you can avoid paying rent for a few months, only needing to cover property fees and utilities. Third, the number of take-out couriers and online ride-hailing drivers continues to rise, but their incomes are decreasing. Even more concerning, there are sometimes queues for people applying for these jobs. Fourth, many landlords have revealed that it is now difficult to rent out their properties. Without voluntarily lowering the rent, no one is interested. Fifth, the government has obviously released a lot of liquidity, hoping people will spend and invest more. However, most people are not only refraining from spending, but are also saving as much as possible in banks. Sixth, many business owners are now avoiding loans for expansion, instead switching between banks to replace previous high-interest loans with lower-interest ones to cut costs. Ten strange phenomena have appeared in Shanghai. In the past, Shanghai was the economic center of the country, with one-third of the country's income coming from Shanghai. Shanghainese and even people across the country were proud of it. Since 2024, many people have posted on social media saying, now Shanghai's economic strength has gradually weakened, the manufacturing industry has almost been evacuated, Shanghai has lost a lot of people all at once, and the economy has collapsed. The current Shanghai is not what it used to be. There are at least 10 strange phenomena in Shanghai. These abnormal phenomena did not exist in the past. In March of this year, Siyu Wen, a financial writer who has lived in Shanghai for more than 10 years, posted a video on his Weibo and WeChat account, to list the top 10 strange phenomena that occurred in Shanghai this year. However, the Weibo account, Rampage Mr. Duan, was banned soon after. First, white-collar workers have begun to bring their own meals. Duan Yuwen said that there used to be a Japanese food shop downstairs from his company, which sold set meals for 40 or 50 yuan, RMB the same below, at noon, but it couldn't sell this year and has closed. Many people carry a bag with them to work and bring rice with them. They heat it up in the microwave at the company at noon and then eat it. Second, no one in the group discusses job hopping. In the previous group of friends, everyone often had heated discussions about job hopping, salary increases, and changing jobs. This year, he didn't see a single message. On the contrary, people often say, Don't call me for any activities this year, or I have to work more overtime this year to keep my job. Third, second-hand houses cannot be sold anymore. In February this year, only 6,800 second-hand houses were sold in Shanghai, with the average transaction price being 38,633 yuan per square meter. The transaction price dropped 9% from the previous month. Fourth, shopping malls in downtown Shanghai are also closing. Take Shujiahui in Shanghai as an example. This is the core business district of Shanghai. 30 years after its opening, Pacific Department Store, once one of the few high-end shopping malls in Shanghai, has also closed its doors. Fifth, office rents are free. A friend engaged in the leasing business in Shanghai told him that in many office parks now, as long as you pay property fees and water and electricity bills, the office rent is basically free. Not only in Shanghai, but also in Beijing's commercial office market, a similar situation has occurred. Sixth, it is very convenient to take a taxi, and luxury cars are also available. Even during rush hour, taxi orders are received within seconds. This was unimaginable before. You typically had to make an appointment and queue up, but now orders are received very quickly, and you can often get luxury cars at cheap prices. Seventh, food delivery is extremely fast. He believes there may be two reasons. Either few people are ordering takeout, resulting in fewer orders, or there are too many takeout workers, many of whom are unemployed and have taken up food delivery, making deliveries very fast even during peak periods. Eighth, more loan calls are received each day than before. Last year, he received one to two loan calls a day. This year, after the new year, the number has at least quadrupled, with eight to nine calls a day. Ninth, there is practically no discussion about traveling abroad. Tenth, there are fewer and fewer foreigners. In the past, foreigners were all over the streets of Shanghai. At its peak, there were more than one million foreigners in Shanghai. But now, even on the Bund and pedestrian streets, there are very few foreigners. There are two reasons. First, working from home in 2022 disillusioned many foreigners. Second, there is less investment from foreign companies, and many foreigners have withdrawn. Shanghai is an international metropolis. Since the 1990s, with the influx of foreign capital, more and more foreigners have come to work in China. Nowadays, even on the streets of Nanjing Road, there are not many foreigners, especially white people. There are more black people than before. The above strange phenomena are a true portrayal of current Shanghai society. Many people in mainland China have sold watches and gold bars, only to have their bank cards frozen. Distant sea fishing refers to the practice where, under financial constraints across various regions in China, police in economically struggling areas go to other regions to enforce laws abnormally. They create criminal links between enterprises through schemes, and then forcibly confiscate private enterprise assets across provinces. Recently, distant sea fishing, in the form of online fraud, has begun targeting individuals' online sales on a large scale. For instance, someone in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, sold a watch for 400,000 yuan. As soon as they received the payment, their bank card was frozen, and they were later arrested by police for alleged involvement in online fraud. Suspected police scheme, distant sea fishing spreads, victims helplessly complain. On October 31st, a woman in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, posted a video online with her ID card, stating that on June 18th, due to poor business and lack of funds, her husband sold his Audemars Piguet watch. However, his bank card was frozen upon receiving the payment. Two days later, the card remained frozen, and her husband was taken to the local police station by officers from Xi'an city, Hubei province, and detained. Hubei police claimed the 400,000 yuan her husband received from selling the watch involved telecom fraud, and he became a suspected fugitive online. The woman expressed her frustration in the video. I almost cried when I heard this. We are honest people, doing business in an honest way, and the money we earn is hard-earned. Why did this happen to us without reason, she said. On the same day, she transferred 400,000 yuan to the Dongyue branch of Xi'an city, Hubei province, and her husband was released that night. We just sold a watch to supplement our family income. Now the watch is gone, and the money has been seized. It has been 140 days since the incident. I don't know how we got through this time. Netizens commented, Let's all use cash or barter in the future. So if they say you're a fraudster, they can just rob you. This is blatant robbery. Ordinary people get robbed for selling a watch. This level of malice is astounding. Recently, there have been multiple incidents in mainland China where people were arrested by police for selling luxury watches, and funds from the sales were forcibly seized. In mid-October, a woman in Zhejiang sold a second-hand Rolex watch for 148,000 yuan, and her bank card was immediately frozen. The incident became a hot topic. The woman was informed by police in Guiyang, Guizhou province, that the money she received was connected to fraud, and she herself was listed as a suspect and pursued online. Later, Wenzhou police ruled out her involvement in the case and issued a written statement. However, Guiyang police disregarded this and forced her to return the 140,000 yuan as stolen money before releasing her on bail. On October 23, Mr. Ma from Nanjing told Modern Express that he had a similar experience. In March, he sold a Rolex watch, and two of the remittances were suspected of fraud. One of the remittances, 200,000 yuan, was frozen by the Danyang police in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu for four months and then forcibly transferred. The other remittance of 256,000 yuan is in the process of being unfrozen by the Jinan police in Shandong. Mr. Ma strongly questioned, If this involves a fraud case, we are willing to cooperate with the investigation, but you can't just transfer the money without my consent. On October 25, the blogger Bobo Small Treasury, who runs a gold shop in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, posted a video stating that she was caught in the ocean. Someone contacted her on WeChat to buy two investment gold bars. After completing the transaction, her card was frozen by the Shaanxi Public Security Bureau, and the money in the card had to be transferred out before it could be unfrozen. Shanghai is in crisis. 1,056,000 restaurants closed in the worst first half of the year. If you've ever been to China, you might remember that restaurants are everywhere. But that is no longer the case today. According to data from Tianyuancha, a Chinese business and commercial information query platform, 1.056 million Chinese catering-related companies closed in the first half of this year. The large-scale closure of restaurants began in 2023, with 1.359 million closures that year. From January to June 2024, in just six months, this data is close to last year's total. Let's first take a look at the videos uploaded by several bloggers on social media showing the current situation of restaurant closures in cities such as Shanghai and Kunming. Now opening a store is like giving away money. This is the center of downtown Shanghai. No, one Y-High Road. Come and feel the current business environment. I ran from the first floor to the third floor, and there were more than two stores on each floor that had closed down. At this time last year, this place was still fully rented. It's only been less than a year. What do you think? In the first half of this year, 1.056 million restaurants closed down, which is close to the total number of last year. The situation is not optimistic. This is a catering street in the county town. It used to be very crowded. Let's take a look at the shops here. Lease, rent, transfer, landlord direct lease, Shandong barbecue transfer, vegetable supermarket transfer and lease. This place is also selling electric cars. The vacant room at the corner of the intersection is rented at a low price. It is very difficult to do the catering business in Linshui this year. I have run a porridge shop at the location of Turtle Monument in Linshui for seven years, and I have never seen such a fierce wave of closures this year. To be honest, the Rujiamo restaurant opposite, his Rujiamo is delicious. We often buy it to eat. But it finally closed down, and I don't know why. The braised pork rice in the Cantonese restaurant is selling well, and we also like it, but it finally closed down. What do you think is going on? Look at the Maokai restaurant that is also closed down. The photo studio is no longer in business. And there is also this store. The stores over there have all closed down. When can these stores be rented out? Another Chinese blogger named Stalking posted a video on July 17, introducing the current situation of the largest new city center in Kunming, Yan'an province. He said that the vacancy rate of closed stores in the entire shopping mall has reached 85%. July, August, and September are the peak seasons for catering. But can this year's peak season be prosperous? If you are in the catering business, you will succeed in one fell swoop if you don't lose money this year. If you can still make a little profit, congratulations, you have already beaten 50% of your peers. Just halfway through this year, 1.05 million restaurants have closed down, close to the total of last year. Many new and inexperienced restaurants closed down in two or three months, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars at lightning speed. Among them, hot pot restaurants are the hardest hit. In the first half of the year, 22,000 stores were registered, of which 26,000 closed down, and more than 4,000 stores lost money. Behind me is the largest business district in Kunming, known as the new center of the city, with an annual passenger flow of about 13 million. Let's take a look at such a large business district. For our physical merchants, how is the current situation? Let's take a look together. They're closed down, closed down, closed down, barbecue, hot pot. This whole large area is about 300 square meters. They used to be connected together, but now they are all closed down. This row of them are all closed down, chaoshan beef, and this one are closed down. The closure rate of the entire mall has reached 85%. There is almost no business. Many friends said that if it is not Saturday, there will definitely be no people. Even if there is less traffic on Wednesday and Thursday, it will not affect its closure. You may say that there is not much traffic on weekdays, but it is now in a state of closure. In such a mall, only big brands such as Haidalao may survive. The economy is in serious recession in the mainland. This situation may become more serious this year, in the second half of 2024, and in 2025. There are many cases where restaurants invested millions of RMB, but closed down within three months. The following video shows the boss talking about his feelings after the failure of his restaurant. He said that he would never do catering again. This is a barbecue restaurant where I invested 1 million RMB, which is $138,000. Unfortunately, it closed down in less than three months. Many people advised me not to open this skewers restaurant, but I chose to open it without hesitation. I only saw others making a lot of money and never thought that it would fail. At that time, the rent for this restaurant cost nearly 200,000 RMB, which is $1.28 USD. The decoration and equipment cost hundreds of thousands of RMB. I dreamed every day that it would be enough to make tens of thousands of RMB a month, not to mention more. Unexpectedly, after opening, the income was not enough to cover the daily rent. The highest daily turnover was 2,000 RMB, which is less than $275 USD. I hired more than a dozen employees and waited three months to resell it, but no one was willing to take it over for a long time. Today it finally ended. Looking at all this, I told myself that I would never do catering again. Why did a large number of restaurants close down? Ms. Lu, a resident of Shandong, said in an interview with Radio Free Asia not long ago that because residents could not find jobs and lost their source of income, they lived frugally. All walks of life are in recession. The prospects are not particularly good now. Ordinary people dare not spend money in order to cope with the situation that they have no choice. Therefore, the consumption pattern of ordinary people has changed. They cannot see hope or the future, but they have to maintain normal expenses. When spending money, they must first make comparisons and secondly, make budgets, such as for children's education, living expenses, and medical costs for themselves or the elderly. The depression of the catering industry is the most direct manifestation of the reduction in income of Chinese residents. Whether ordinary people go to restaurants for meals can be seen at a glance. In order to survive in this difficult environment, the Chinese catering industry has launched poor man's combo. For example, the well-known Chinese fast food brand Nanchang Xiang launched a 3 yuan or 40 cents buffet breakfast, claiming that for only 3 yuan, you can drink unlimited porridge, milk, soy milk, and other breakfast drinks. There are also restaurants that offer a 2-dish and 1-rice set meal for 14.9 yuan, or about 2 US dollars. Tea chain stores also offer a $1.35 bread and milk tea combination. A hot pot restaurant owner, Sister Shai, introduced in a video that her hot pot restaurant's turnover fell 50%. Sister Shai found that both old and new customers rarely patronize the store. The turnover was sometimes less than 10,000 RMB, and at 7 o'clock in the evening, the seats outside were still empty. Today's order was only four tables, and the business of the whole street was also bleak, with almost no customers in the neighboring shops.