Dongguan Is Collapsing: Taiwanese Firms Flee, “World’s Factory” Turns into a Ghost City!

There's no one left. Fortunately, we're still doing business online. If not, I honestly don't know how we would survive. It feels completely over. These machines are about to become scrap iron. Since August, factories in Dongguan and Shenzhen have been shutting down one after another. Piles of equipment are stacked everywhere. And for more than 10 days, not a single person has come to even take a look. Don't even think about selling them. Every machine is lying here like a dead body. If this continues, it will all rot into useless iron. For the past two years, China's economy has sunk into a gloomy state. Domestic demand has collapsed. Consumption is weak. And countless companies can't hold on anymore. They're being forced to shut down. Some Taiwanese-invested firms were hit hard by U.S. tariffs and moved their production lines to Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Tens of thousands of Chinese workers are now facing unemployment. I'm 37 and already lost my job in Shenzhen. I'm relying on my husband and my boss just to get by. Life has become painfully simple. Nothing like before. I once lived without worrying about anything. I never even thought about money. But now I compare food prices every day. To be honest, Shenzhen is no longer a place for young people. Forget getting rich. Just surviving is hard. Yesterday, Bozhu ordered takeout. And the delivery guy looked like a fresh graduate. More and more college students are becoming delivery riders and couriers. The future feels darker by the day. There is really no way out. This city has over 10 million people. Yet the shops are deserted and countless apartments sit empty. Guangzhou town used to shine like a cloud of neon lights. Crowds used to pack the streets. Now even waving outside hotels, you can't find anyone. I just want to ask, where has everybody gone? Ladies, where are you? Do you know how stunning Huangjiang's East Hall used to be? People called it Little Hong Kong. It was once livelier than Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. Factories stood every few steps, followed by buzzing shopping streets. Lights glowed everywhere. And just around the next corner, you'd find a supermarket. Another hotel on the left, every street overflowing with people. But now the job market in Shenzhen has completely changed. Companies aren't rushing to recruit anymore. Whether big or small, they're slow to respond. Some job postings look like zombies, just sitting there, untouched. And you don't even know if they truly want to hire. There's no reply at all. She remembered how easy job hunting used to be. She could land a position in one or two weeks. She sent resumes in bulk, went to multiple interviews a day, and picked the best offer. She worked in live streaming. Four hours a day used to be enough, then five. Now besides the five-hour live stream, she has to work an additional two or three hours daily. He said everything feels different now. Do you know why Dongguan has turned into an empty city? In the past, Dongguan was filled with workers. The city attracted migrant laborers with promises of social security solutions and schooling for their children. But now it's all gone. I keep thinking, so many workers fought for decades, yet still can't afford even a tiny home. The once booming Dongguan is becoming a ghost city. Data shows Dongguan has lost over a million people in recent years, up to 42% of its total population, making it one of the fastest declining cities in China. Let me tell you how much I earned in 16 years in Shenzhen, and how I survived with no house, no car, and no savings. I feel exhausted just thinking about it. Back in 2009, I came to Shenzhen through a school recruitment program. It was a chain store job. My first year salary was 2,000 CNY a month, then 2,600, and by the third year, it reached 10,000. I worked three and a half years and saved over 200,000 CNY. I supported myself and sent money home. After that, I returned to Guangxi for half a year to learn how to make rice noodles. In 2015, I opened a Luo Sifen shop with a 200,000 CNY loan. But by 2017, it went bankrupt, leaving me 280,000 CNY in debt. Then I opened a small clothing shop. From 2018 to 2019, I ran a 10-square-meter store in Changsha. After two years, I finally cleared my debt. Because the shop was too small, he closed it in July 2019 and opened another one in Shizui. But just six months later, the pandemic hit. For the next few years, business never recovered. There was no real profit. In the end, he sighed. After 16 years of grinding in Shenzhen, all he had left was piles of unsold clothing. Family as the only employee besides the boss, I just lost my job too. The layoff came without warning because my boss wanted to go to Shenzhen for a month-long training. She said she couldn't pay me this month and suggested I find another job. If I'm still available after her training, I can come back. I knew the company wasn't stable, but I didn't expect such chaos. Now I'm unemployed again. The owner said he spent the entire morning sending resumes, but HR never replied. He sighed. I barely see pregnant women on the street now. They used to be everywhere. Today, more and more women are delivering food instead. But he said he couldn't do it. He doesn't even know the roads. He doesn't know what to do about the future. Hello, everyone. After 14 long months of searching, I finally found a job. It was unbelievably hard. When I first started looking in June, I was still in short sleeves. Now I'm wearing a full suit. Yesterday, I went for an interview, but honestly, I had zero hope. The doctor said he was planning to ride his bike to check out a secondhand electric scooter. Because if he couldn't find a job soon, he would start delivering food. But in the middle of the ride, suddenly the message came. He passed the interview and had to report the next day. She laughed bitterly, saying that now that she has a job again, she's officially back to being a working animal. Another worker complained that wages in Dongguan are simply too low. Suzhou pays 20 or 30 yuan per hour. Yet Dongguan is still stuck at 17 or 18. And in a few days, they'll start packing and moving again. Yes, their card machine assembly line is relocating for the second time. We moved from Baoshan to Dongguan back in 2018. We poured more than 100,000 yuan into rebuilding production, stocking materials, cleaning the warehouse, and renovating. And now we're moving again. The workshop is already half emptied. The blogger said factory owners fear this kind of large-scale relocation the most because it's expensive, risky, and requires reinstalling every machine and mold from scratch. Then the company notified me to come in and settle my contract. I was fired. I don't even know how to describe the feeling. I worked here for more than 10 years. I'm the oldest employee. I held this video back for days because I didn't know how to say goodbye. Once I finish packing, I will leave. At the end of the month, I still have a few formalities to complete. And just like that, my career here is over. Boju said he's 40 now, and the layoff notice came out of nowhere. He has no idea what to do next. With children's tuition, rent, bills, pressure is choking him. He said he truly has no plan. The economy is terrible this year, and factories are collapsing everywhere. Everyone needs to cherish whatever job they still have. This factory used to be strong, producing electric motors. Yet now barely any workers remain. The place is a wreck. It was once a thriving factory with glorious days 20, 30 years ago. Now it feels like a fading dream. I remember when I first entered the peach market 10 years ago. Changchun Thai Oxen Market, or Doi, was legendary. Every recruitment event attracted huge crowds. What caused its collapse? The reasons are worth thinking about. We spent more than a decade in this factory. We moved here in July 2013, and today we're moving again. We're reluctant. We're sad. The iron shed used to hit 50 degrees in summer, and I worked inside it for two years. Amidst the trade war and the great industrial exodus, capital flight has become more obvious. A list of East China Sea companies showed at least 12 firms, including electronics and textiles, moved to Vietnam or Thailand this year. On October 7th, a Weibo user posted a notice he saw while biking to work. It said that next month he would be unemployed. He worked at a telecom factory in Liushui Town, Dongguan, earning 5,000 yuan a month. 3,200 went to the mortgage, and the remaining amount barely fed his family of three. His notice explained that the entire factory was relocating out of Dongguan, and employees needed to confirm their status in person. Another netizen shared that after a nearby clothing factory moved to Jiangpu, more than 200 workers lost their jobs, and half still haven't found work. Many now deliver food or run roadside stalls just to survive. Another netizen said his father worked in a Dongguan shoe factory for 10 years. After the factory moved to Vietnam, he received 50,000 yuan in compensation, but now waits by the road for odd jobs, earning less than 100 yuan a day. Another said her mother opened a breakfast shop after her factory moved to Myanmar, but daily revenue is now only a few dozen yuan. She used to worry about being overworked. Now she worries about having no customers at all. A 38-year-old unemployed worker sighed. He lived in a factory dormitory for eight years. After being laid off, he kept scrolling through job apps until he couldn't anymore, still finding nothing suitable. Not because of the over-35 rule, but because salaries were too low to accept. He said, panicked, I still have a mortgage. Am I supposed to feed my wife and child with air? Another worker said he checked the old job market. Most factories now only hire people under 40.