From fake Jobs to human feed: China’s economic meltdown

So today, let's shift gears and take a hard look at what life is really like in China right now. Let me say this, it's bleak. In recent months, salary cuts have swept through government offices and stateowned enterprises across China. Even big name sectors like the finance um the financial firms and even telecom aren't spared. According to Taiing, a Chinese financial media outlet, 27 state-owned financial giants, including China Development Bank and CIC, um, which is China International Capital Corporation, have introduced new salary cap rules and government in some of the country's richest regions like Beijing, Shanghai, and Jang have even set up a new agency called the Office of Pay Cuts. It sounds wasteful. Why do you need to set up a new office to cut costs? But seriously, it's it's a real thing in China. They the government have set up uh the office of pay cuts to pay cuts to to cut pays. So they cut people's pay across the board including hospital staff, police officers, teachers, and SOE. I mean people working for SOE. And the average cut it's about 30%. In some places it's as high as 50%. So with shrinking paychecks, people are spending less and that has triggered a brutal price war. Small business owners are slashing prices just to survive. But this isn't a healthy competition. Uh and the price war has resulted in mutual destruction because more businesses have gone bankrupt. And to make things even worse, the central government just issued a rule, a new rule um that basically said that government workers aren't allowed to eat out, not even on their own dime. If three officials or more dine together at a restaurant, that's considered a violation. And on the surface, the idea is to make sure that the government officials live a stare life. But in reality, I think Jonah is afraid that officials get together to form small circles. Uh drinking is also banned. So according to Chinese media reports on June 17th, following the the announcement of the new ban, seven major liquor stocks in China dropped by more than 10%. And many people are now worried about the impact on China's food and beverage industry because of this rule. I mean the the industry was already or is already sluggish um after the pandemic and and this new rule will further devastate the restaurant industry which has always been relying on these regular highincome government employees. Right? So, one Chinese economist sum sum it up like this. The government has no money to pay its people and the people have no reason to spend. So, we're watching the whole system tighten from top from the top down. With so many people out of a job, a strange new business is booming. Fake offices for unemployed workers are showing up. Yes, you heard that right. Laid-off people who don't want their families to know they're unemployed are now renting a desk in these fake offices. They show up at 9:00, leave at 5, pretending they're still working. And the spaces charge 30 to50 yen a day and that's4 to7 a day and provide Wi-Fi, snacks, and some they they even offer like lunch at an additional cost. So what started as co-working spaces is now a psychological crutch for unemployed people. They're too ashamed to admit the truth. So they fake it. It's mostly white collar professional people, people who hold professional jobs. Um and some guys, it's mostly men. I mean, men, Chinese men are under so much pressure to make money, and it's it's hard for them to tell their wives that they don't have a job because some women would just leave them. We just abandon them. So, they're scared. They don't want to tell them. So, some men still hand their wives fake salary money at the end of the month, but it was money that they borrowed on credit cards. and the workers daily uh it's a newspaper um stateowned newspaper reported that one unemployed man he he realized that there was a need for this kind of space so he spent tens of thousands of dollars it was hundreds of thousands but I converted to like it's tens of thousand tens of thousands of dollars and converted the space into a pretend working office um so his setup includes 30 desks meeting rooms, snack bars, and even live stream studios and daily access costs. $7. Yeah. So, I crunched the numbers. If fully occupied, he could put in around $4,000 a month by doing nothing. That's actually a pretty lucrative business still. But not everyone can afford it, of course. You know, when you're unemployed, the last thing you want to do is spend money, right? To some people even even 30 30 yen a day feels like a lot. But interestingly this business is doing pretty well. I mean it's a booming business. Think about it. This this fake office is a booming business in China. And if you think about it only in China could a business catering to unemployed people become profitable. But when society starts making money off the jobless ones, something is wrong. Okay, so that's just one one business and there's another one. I mean there are actually two more. The other is called full-time grandchild or grandkid. So when youth unemployment became sky-high, many young people are returning home to care for their grandparents. For some family, this arrangement works pretty well. So there was one example. One grandfather offered offered his grandson this deal. He said, "Take care of me. Help me live longer. That's better than any job you will find. He gets a pension of 10,000 yen a month and he keeps 3,000 and gives his grandson 7,000 and that's a very generous offer. So if he offered the kids not 7,000, a couple of thousand and then free food and free room, that's better than the jobs that they can find. Um there was a post went viral showing a job in Guangjo. It was a 6500 yen a month working for a a dessert factory. They make sweets, but you have to work 14 hours a day from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. in the morning and you make 6500 6,500 a month. But if you live and eat at the factory, if you live in their dorm, you work 16 hours a day from 11:00 a.m. to 300 a.m. and then you don't get weekend. You work seven days a week and get two days off in a month. Think about it. That's slavery. So that's why taking care of your grandpa and grandma um became an ideal job. But not everyone is so lucky. Uh, in cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen, some people are ending up on the streets under highway overpasses at night, you can now see men, women, young people, and elderly sleeping on sidewalks. And they're not the worst. The worst scenario. This week, the internet blew up with a new phrase called human feed. Yes, human feed. Like animal feed, but for human, for people. These are meal replacement drinks that cost about 30 yen a day and promise to keep you full for four to six hours. And they take only three minutes to drink per meal. Just gulp it down. And it all started with a programmer who didn't have time to eat lunch. And so he created this liquid food. But now it's being used out of poverty. And for some people it's all about convenience. So in China right now there are millions if not tens of millions who rely on odd jobs or side jobs like delivery, food delivery like Uber, right? Uber driving Uber cars or time share cars. So these people have no time, no energy and no money to take a break, sit down and eat a real meal. So what they do is they drink this nutritional sludge, I guess, to save time and to save money. Um, and one food delivery worker shared this comment and he said, "After running food orders all day, I collapsed onto my mattress at the end of the day. I took a bite of this human feed and it hit me. My life is finished." It's quite bleak. Think about it. A man who has been delivering food orders for people all day long could only end up eating human feed. You know, this drink, it's dehumanizing and it says more than words could ever could. Um, but just like the pretend offices, the human feed business is booming. In 2024, sales soared past 23 billion yuan, which is about $3 billion. And it's said that investments are pouring in and some companies are already planning to go public. Um, industry insiders expected to grow into a market worth hundreds of billions of yan. Like I said before, when businesses that cater to the desperate and unemployed are thriving, something is deeply wrong. So now let's talk about the protests that's erupting across China. This past week, a wave of protests broke out across China. And according to Radio Free Asia, at least 21 protests occurred in just four days. And what do people protest about? Well, unpaid wages is is the number one. And there's forced evictions, you know, land seizures, school district disputes, reduced Medicare or reduced social security benefits. This latest wave of unrest began around June 16th. Um, and they have been reported in over a dozen provinces and cities including Hub Beijing and Shanghai. They include some of the most the some of the wealthiest cities and provinces in China like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangong and Jangu and also some poor areas like Gansu and Chingghai. So it's all over and a review of the events show a concentration in wage arars or owed wages uh pay and benefits cuts and most importantly suppression of petitioners. A lot of these people uh are angry because they've been petitioning the government to address their grievances sometimes for months and for years. But instead of helping them resolving the issues or the disputes the police the local police you know suppress them and then so people get together in larger groups and there are larger protests. On June 23rd a lawyer surnamed Leo from Guangong who asked to remain anonymous told uh Radio Free Asia he said it's extremely rare to see more than 20 group protests in just four days. The stream of the stream stream of events revealed how rapidly the economy is deteriorating. Migrant workers are being exploited, wages and welfare squeezed and the pressure on working people is now unbearable. The one former journalist told Free Asia, "These people already tried legal help and got ignored. Protests are their last resort. If you have 21 protests in four days, that's not a coincidence. It's a sign of a deep or or I should say deep cracks in the system as the economy sinks, the legal system fails, and free speech suppressed.