Great Famine Hits Tens of Millions Unemployed in China Surviving on Trash Wild Plants Even Grass

Recently, a strange phenomenon has appeared online in China. More and more videos are showing people digging up wild vegetables and scrambling for them. In the videos, some people carry bags and search through wastelands, some squat by the roadside, pulling up handfuls of plants, and in some areas, groups of people rush in to pick wild vegetables and fruits. What's even more shocking is that many netizens have shared videos of themselves living on foraged vegetables, openly admitting that they are so poor they have to eat them. They're not doing this for health reasons or to experience rural life. They're doing it to save money on groceries. If only a few people were foraging, it might be for the novelty. But when videos of people fighting over fields or fruit trees appear across the country, it's no longer just a lifestyle choice. People have even fought over a plot of land or a single tree. This reveals the true economic pressure on ordinary Chinese people. Decreased income, unstable jobs, declining consumption, and increasingly tight living conditions. Eating wild vegetables used to be a nostalgic reminder of tough times, but now it's a sad necessity for many trying to save money. In addition to foraging for wild vegetables, similar scenes of hardship continue to surface. In one dormitory, a male college student sits at his desk with a large bowl of rice in front of him. He eats it hungrily, as if it's not just ordinary rice, but a rare treat. Another viral video shows a young boy, probably under five years old, wearing torn clothes and holding a large sack. He bends down to pick up garbage in front of a row of trash bins. In front of him is another boy, perhaps under three years old, who seems to be his younger brother. This scene has left many netizens feeling heartbroken. Some people commented that at such a young age, these kids should be holding their parents' hands, going to kindergarten, and playing, not rummaging through garbage. It paints a grim picture of how bad China's economy has become. There are also many elderly people who are homeless. Videos of elderly people searching through trash cans for food or leftovers can often be seen online. Many netizens lament that this is perhaps the reality of China's domestic poverty line. My family of three is being supported by my dad, who works as a security guard. But the situation is even worse because my dad is about to lose his job too. It's like when it rains, it pours. I failed in my business venture before and owe over 200,000 yuan. My wife used to work in landscaping, which is in the construction industry. But that whole sector is doing poorly now, and she has no work. Even the property fees are starting to get delayed. We just managed to pay this quarter's fees, and the next quarter is already here. It's embarrassing to even talk about. The floor mats in our car have a huge hole, and I haven't replaced them because we can't afford it. Friends ask me why I always wear the same clothes in videos. It's not that I don't want to change, but this is the only outfit I have that fits. I bought it before I got married, and I've been wearing it for over three years now. The only good thing is that my kid has started eating solid food, so we're saving a bit on milk powder. I've been buying secondhand stuff like crawling mats and strollers, expensive things that don't last long, but they're still usable. I go to the supermarket after 8.30pm because that's when they discount the vegetables. They might look a bit worse, but at least we can eat them. If my socks get a hole, I don't throw them away. I sew them up myself, just like when I was a kid. Right now, all I can think about is how to make money and how to keep going. What about you guys? How bad has it gotten for you? From the growing number of people sleeping on the streets, it's clear that China's unemployment pressure is worsening. Unemployment, declining income, and rising living costs are pushing some people into even more difficult situations. Wow, the workers from Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan have all gone back home. Now in Ningbo, there's no work to be found. Look at this, so many people don't have jobs now. Most of them are from Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, and everyone has gone back home. It's only April, and there's no work. What should we do? You can't even find work as a laborer anymore, let alone us in the labor services industry. What's going on here? On April 21st, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics released the unemployment data by age group for March 2026. The urban youth unemployment rate for ages 16 to 24 reached 16.9 percent, up by 0.8 percentage points from last month, hitting a four-month high. The unemployment rate for those aged 25 to 29 was 7.7 percent, up by 0.5 percentage points from the previous month, marking the highest point since March 2025 and the highest since the data was first published in December 2023. The unemployment rate for those aged 30 to 59 was 4.3 percent, also up by 0.1 percentage points from the previous month. Meanwhile, the National Urban Survey unemployment rate rose to 5.4 percent in March, the highest since March last year. And there's more pressure coming. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in China estimates that this year, 12.7 million university graduates will enter the workforce, 480,000 more than last year, setting a new historical high. This means that the job market is likely to face another wave of pressure. What's even more concerning is that these dire figures may not even reflect the full reality. As we pointed out before, in June 2023, the official youth unemployment rate for ages 16 to 24 reached 21.3 percent, a record high. However, this data was then temporarily suspended. By December 2023, the statistical criteria changed. The new methodology no longer includes students, and new age groups for 25 to 29 and 30 to 59 were added. But these groups also excluded students. So the youth unemployment rate we see now is based on the new formula, which has lowered the figures, a number game played by the government. In addition to playing with numbers, the Chinese government has also started playing with words. On April 24th, the National People's Congress Legislative Affairs Committee held a press conference to introduce revisions to the draft social assistance law. A spokesperson stated that the draft of the social assistance law, after its third reading, proposes four major changes, one of which is renaming homeless and beggars to dispersed persons. The official explanation is that this change does not affect rescue efforts, but is an adjustment made based on the development and changes in social rescue work, aiming to make the description more accurate, neutral, and concise. However, many view this as another round of the familiar word game. In the past, the Chinese government has often used changes in terminology to downplay economic pressures and hide social issues. For example, unemployment was once referred to as downsizing or being on standby. In recent years, employment difficulties have been rebranded as flexible employment, self-employed economy, and light entrepreneurship. Some glaring signs of economic decline are now called negative growth, reduced development, or even non-temporary economic recession periods. Now, homeless and beggars has been renamed dispersed persons. Official rhetoric seems to have made it sound less harsh, but changing the term doesn't change the reality. The people without homes, stable income, and in need of social assistance still exist. This change quickly sparked mockery from netizens. Some joked, wait for wealth persons would be more fitting. Others sarcastically commented, why not call them the poetic and faraway group? One even suggested, let's call them wandering knights. Sounds more positive. What's even more troubling is that under such severe economic conditions, China's employment pressure faces new external shocks. After the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, shipping in the Strait of Hormuz was paralyzed for a time, severely impacting China's energy and trade systems. With Middle Eastern shipping routes disrupted, key foreign trade hubs such as Yiwu, Shenzhen, and Guangdong were hit hard, with many businesses seeing a sharp decline in orders and shipping costs skyrocketing. Small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are now facing existential pressures. Currently, the shipping situation in the Strait of Hormuz remains unstable, severely disrupting China's logistics chain for exports to the Middle East. According to reports from mainland media on April 25th, Guo Peigong, general manager of Zhejiang Xiaoshuda Supply Chain Management Company, revealed that his company still has more than 50 containers stranded at sea, with over a dozen originally scheduled to go to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Since the outbreak of the war, the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, two critical shipping routes have become extremely risky, especially the Strait of Hormuz, which handles about one-third of global oil trade by sea. If passage remains unstable, it will affect not only oil prices, but also directly impact global logistics and foreign trade costs. In the past, shipping a standard container from Shanghai to the Middle East cost about 3,000 to 4,000 US dollars. Now, the base shipping cost has risen to 5,000 to 6,000 dollars. And with war risks or charges and other fees, the total cost can exceed 10,000 dollars, almost three times the normal cost. Facing port congestion and shipping route risks, some shipping companies are forced to detour around the Cape of Good Hope. But this adds more time and higher costs. Guo Peigong said that after the outbreak of the conflict, his company urgently stopped loading around 20 containers, with some urgent orders rerouted via the China-Europe Railway Express. However, the containers still at sea are accumulating detention and transfer fees, with costs increasing every day. Liu Jiarong, the owner of a lighting factory in Jiangmen, Guangdong, said that his factory's products were all sold to the Middle East, with annual revenue once exceeding 200 million yuan. In the past, as long as the Middle Eastern market was stable, the orders could sustain the factory's normal operations, workers had jobs, and the production lines kept running. But after war broke out, the orders suddenly disappeared. Customers were too afraid to place orders, goods couldn't be shipped, and payments became difficult. Liu Jiarong had no choice but to urge customers to settle last year's payments first, then shut down the factory, waiting for the war to end before considering reopening. When the factory shuts down, the most direct consequence is unemployment. Many shop floor workers could be told the next day to stop work and go home. The situation in Yiwu is similarly dire. According to preliminary statistics from Yiwu Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, in the past month, some merchants' orders from the Middle East have dropped by 50% compared to the same period last year. According to China's political and economic media Southern Window, the five provinces that export the most to the Middle East are Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Shanghai. Together, they account for 67% of the total. Among them, Yiwu, known as the world's supermarket, had an export value of 109.3 billion yuan to the Middle East in 2025. But now, the number of Middle Eastern merchants in Yiwu has fallen by half. Yuqing Wen, who works in foreign trade in Yiwu, said that March and April, which should have been peak shipping season, saw a halt in many orders due to the war. A small department store supplier he knows usually saw orders for Ramadan that were 50% to 100% higher than usual, with the highest sales reaching over 20 million yuan in those months. However, from March to April this year, they only sold over 1 million yuan worth of goods, less than one-tenth of the usual sales, meaning that 90% of their orders had evaporated. A clothing foreign trade business owner in Yiwu also stated that the foot traffic in the market has decreased by nearly half compared to before the war. What's more troublesome is that many raw materials, such as plastic and fibers, rely on petroleum refinement. With the rise in oil prices and transportation costs, raw material prices have also increased, further squeezing profit margins. This means that the impact of the war is not one-dimensional. On one hand, logistics are disrupted. Goods can't be shipped. On the other hand, shipping costs have soared, eating into profits. Meanwhile, Middle Eastern consumer demand has decreased, and customers are hesitant to place orders. For foreign trade businesses, it's a triple pressure of lost orders, rising costs, and shrinking cash flow. If market demand remains sluggish, the orders for Christmas preparations, which should have started in the summer, may also continue to decline. For many small and medium-sized enterprises, the biggest problem right now isn't how much money they're making, but whether they can hold on until the war ends. On the other hand, foreign investment data is also trapped in a self-deceptive digital maze. On April 24th, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce released data showing that from January to March 2026, actual foreign direct investment, FDI, amounted to 249.6 billion yuan, a 7.3% decrease compared to the previous year. This indicates that the actual amount of foreign investment entering China is still declining. However, at the same time, the number of newly established foreign-invested enterprises reached 13,987, an 11% increase compared to the previous year. On the surface, the number of foreign enterprises has increased, and it seems that many foreign investors are still willing to enter China. But the key issue is, while the number of companies has increased, the money has decreased. From an industry perspective, actual FDI in the manufacturing sector amounted to 71.46 billion yuan, while the service sector received 174.6 billion yuan. High-tech industries saw actual FDI of 102.7 billion yuan, a 30% increase compared to the previous year, accounting for 41.2% of the national debt, up 12 percentage points from the same period last year. Among these, R&D and design services grew by 127.8%, the computer and office equipment manufacturing sector grew by 88%, and the electronics and communication equipment manufacturing sector grew by 23.8%. While these sub-sector figures look impressive, they obscure a larger contrast. Why is the number of foreign-invested enterprises increasing, but the actual investment amount declining? Yin Min, an investment consultant in Beijing, explained that the rise in the number of foreign-invested enterprises is largely due to lowered registration thresholds. Some foreign companies now have registered capital of only a few hundred thousand yuan, which is not even on the same scale as the large manufacturing investments of the past, which were often worth hundreds of millions of yuan. In other words, the increase in the number of enterprises does not equal a return in foreign investor confidence. What truly matters isn't how many companies are registered, but how much capital is actually coming in, how many projects are being implemented, and whether the investment scale is expanding. Yin Min stated, an increase in quantity doesn't indicate the problem. The reduction in investment is what shows the economic issue. Professor Fan Jiazhong, a distinguished professor of economics at Taiwan University, believes that China's current economic structure has several similarities to the period before the Soviet Union's collapse. First, military spending is becoming increasingly burdensome. While China's economy has slowed, military spending has remained above 7% annual growth for over a decade. In order to compete with the United States, China keeps pouring resources into its military. With substantial gray area expenditures not accounted for in the official budget. This is a bottomless pit, and it was one of the main reasons that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union's finances. Second, the economy is becoming more government-driven. From a planned economy to the current 14th five-year plan, the Chinese government's intervention in the economy has become stronger. State-owned enterprises are growing, and private enterprises are weakening. The trend is pushing China's economy back toward a highly regulated model. Third, the bureaucratic system is becoming increasingly rigid. Fan pointed out that the political surges within the system are severe, and officials have developed the mindset of, the more you do, the more mistakes you make. The less you do, the fewer mistakes you make. If you do nothing, you make no mistakes. More and more people are choosing to lie flat, afraid to expose problems or report real crises. As a result, the highest levels of leadership are becoming more trapped in an information bubble, hearing only false information, and making decisions based on incorrect data. Fourth, data falsification is becoming more widespread. Fan Jiazhong believes that falsification is a persistent issue within the Communist Party system. When everyone is falsifying data, no one knows the truth. Ironically, the Communist Party itself will also be affected by its own fake data. Misleading data distorts decision-making, and erroneous policies accumulate, ultimately leading to systemic crises. This is another striking similarity with the period before the Soviet Union's collapse. Additionally, China's debt crisis is now quite serious. Fan believes that China's government debt has exceeded 100% of GDP, while total social debt exceeds 300%. The fiscal deficit continues to expand. If the situation worsens, the entire system will face a real risk of collapse when public servant wages can no longer be paid. So, today's issues in China are not just about real estate, consumption, or unemployment. The real problem is that the entire development logic has gone wrong. Over the past 40 years, China relied on opening up, marketization, foreign investment, and demographic dividends to rapidly grow the economy. But in recent years, more and more resources have been used to strengthen control, stifling market vitality, and weakening society's ability to self-correct. As a result, the economic pie is no longer growing. Distribution is becoming tighter. Capital is pulling out. People are leaving. And confidence is continuing to decline. China's economy has reached this point not because of short-term fluctuations or a single policy mistake, but because of a structural crisis accumulated over long-term governance logic. The real danger is not a single cold statistic, but the growing realization among more and more people that this system is losing its ability to self-correct. you