Barely Fed, Back in Poverty! China’s Economy Enters Final Collapse, 50M Economic Refugees Go Global

It is after 2am and my husband is gone. Why is life so hard? Our shop closed, we have no income. He quietly went out to deliver food. He said it was his first time and he couldn't find his way. His very first delivery was late and the platform penalised him. Then he took a phone call and missed an order from the system, so he was penalised again. he only took three orders and made less than 20 yuan why is it so hard he used to be successful now he has to swallow his pride and deliver food my illness costs us a lot of money and we still have a 7 000 yuan monthly mortgage payment you know 7 000 yuan feels like so so much money now we can't afford it anymore we work hard but without degrees or specialized skills we feel like we're nothing more people in china are struggling financially as factories halt production Companies cut jobs and construction sites shut down. Some have left office jobs to deliver food just to survive. Others, laid off in their 40s, sent out hundreds of resumes and still cannot find work. It's hard to find a stable job now. A former co-worker about my age had been unemployed for almost a year. Last month, a friend helped him find a sales job at a mall. He started at the end of the month, and by the 10th of this month, they told him the store wasn't renewing its lease and would close. They just settled his compensation over the last couple of days. He was still on probation, so he got a little over half a month's pay. Yesterday, he messaged me and said, I'm going to be unemployed again. All I could do was comfort him. I said, you worked less than a month. It's like working one month and getting two months pay. That's not bad. But deep down, I understand. Losing your job again at this age leaves you anxious and lost. Still, life goes on. What else can you do? I'm 41, almost 42. sorry I used to wear a mask in my videos because I lost some teeth and I still haven't had them replaced now I'm about to lose my job for the second time unemployed in middle age buried in debt I really don't know where to go from here I can't keep driving for work my body can't keep up it's so hard my family has already helped me so much now there are problems with my divorce and my family is unhappy I don't know what to say to them either I've struggled with depression for years. I see no hope for my future. None. Several more years have passed and nothing has changed. I see even less hope now. I'm finding it hard to keep going. China's Bureau of Statistics reported on October 19, 2023, that nationwide fixed asset investment fell 7.2% year over year in the first three quarters. Property development investment dropped 20.6%, new housing starts by floor area fell 24.9%, and private investment declined 10.4%. When housing projects stop, steel fixers, bricklayers, and carpenters lose work. When homes do not sell, renovation companies, building material suppliers, and real estate agents also suffer. Many spent more than a decade or even decades in the industry. Now, they are suddenly out of work and trying to change careers in their 40s or 50s. Age often becomes another barrier to finding work in China. Some employers favor young workers viewing middle-aged applicants as too old and too expensive. Yet people at that age often carry the heaviest family responsibilities. Their children are still in school, their parents are aging, and mortgage and car payments still come due. My husband is 38 and he can't find a job anymore. He left his job in May because he couldn't take the pressure and stress. Our family moved from the big city of Wuhan to a tiny county town in Guangdong. Now four or five months have passed and he still has no income. I make 2,000 yuan a month working part-time. His mortgage, renovation loan and credit card payments total about 5,000 yuan a month. Then there's rent and living costs for the three of us here. We need at least 8,000 yuan a month. He's also tried running a food stall. He went back to Wuhan to learn from his brother how to make our local Hubei specialty braised dishes, but the flavor didn't seem to suit people here in Guangdong, so it didn't take off. We have to face reality. Our main goal now is simply to survive, so he's going to look for a job again. He told me he sent out hundreds of resumes these last few days. He's tried big cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Foshan. All he gets are instant rejections. These people want to work. They cannot find companies willing to hire them, so more people are looking abroad. Going abroad will be one of the most worthwhile things you can do over the next 10 or even 30 years. Don't worry about what you'll do once you get there or how you'll manage to stay. Take the first step and leave. There will be plenty of options and opportunities waiting for you. Chinese workers once went abroad mainly to earn extra money beyond what they could make at home. Today, some leave because they cannot find suitable work in China. Others have jobs but still cannot escape debt and financial pressure. The newspaper Lianhe Zabao reported on the experience of Xiao Guan, a 28-year-old man from China. After submitting 200 to 300 resumes in China, Xiao Guan still could not find suitable work. He later secured an overseas assignment in Indonesia, then moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa in October 2025. He faced a completely unfamiliar environment there and and contracted malaria soon after arriving. Xiaoguan chose to stay. He told reporters he could save money two to three times as fast in Africa as he had in Indonesia. He hoped to build up savings through several years of overseas work before eventually immigrating to Germany. For these workers, leaving China also means leaving behind the financial difficulties they faced at home. Let me explain why I want to work abroad. I did the math. A regular job in China might pay 4,000 or 5,000 yuan a month. After expenses, I'd have 2,000 or 3,000 yuan left. Abroad, I might earn 2,000 plus or 3,000 Singapore dollars a month. Living costs are higher, but if I'm careful, I can still save a good amount. For ordinary people like us, the most important thing is to build up our first real savings as quickly as possible while we're young. That gives us more choices where we work and what we do come second. Figures released by China's Ministry of Commerce on September 28, 2023, show Chinese companies sent 315,000 workers abroad from January through August, 44,000 more than a year earlier. By the end of August, 681,000 workers were on overseas assignments. Those figures cover company-arranged overseas labor assignments. They do not fully count Chinese workers who find jobs abroad through individual applications, local recruitments, or other channels. As China's domestic job market remains under pressure, overseas jobs are drawing more interest from ordinary job seekers. Some consider leaving recruiting jobs at state-owned companies to become care workers in Australia. Others leave China's property industry to seek construction work abroad. Some head to African mining regions or wash dishes in Germany's restaurants. Others look for income in Japanese factories, South Korean farms, and Singaporean construction sites. Even people who once had stable jobs and happy families with lives others envied are beginning to leave China with their families. More people will leave China to live and work abroad. Many people around me have already done it. You probably know some too. One of my college classmates is from Beijing. After graduation, she went straight back and her family arranged a job for her at a public school to all of us she had a successful life a stable job a happy family and summer and winter breaks it sounded great a few days ago i saw a post on her wechat moments she was studying in new zealand when we talked i learned she'd been there for almost a year her husband and child had joined her later not everyone can leave through study abroad or standard immigration pathways for people buried in debt and urgently needing income construction jobs overseas can seem more practical. Israel is one of those destinations. Despite the long-standing threat of war and security risks, Chinese construction workers still travel to Israel for wages higher than they can earn at home. I owe hundreds of thousands of yuan. I'm buried in debt. So I came to Israel to work and get back on my feet. I can only pay back less this month because there are more holidays. Right after the new year comes, Yom Kippur. It's a very sacred holiday here. Paying off hundreds or thousands of yuan through a regular job in China could take many years. Work in Israel may pay more, but it also demands more physical effort and brings great security risks. In April 2026, Southern People Weekly reported on a young Chinese man named Song Tao. The 30-year-old had worked in sales with an unstable income. He relied on credit cards and online loans to get by. Eventually, he was borrowing to repay other loans and owed hundreds of thousands of yuan. His parents ran a grocery store in his hometown in Zhejiang. Business had been poor in recent years, leaving them with large stocks of unsold goods. They helped cover some of his debt, but it was nowhere near enough. During a visit home, Song learned from a relative working on construction sites in Israel that workers there could earn 300,000 to 400,000 a year, about US$42,000 to US$56,000. He decided to go abroad. Song began contacting recruitment agencies in 2023, but did not get clear progress on his visa until August 2024. He first paid a deposit of about US$5,000, then a balance of more than US$90,000. With airfare, medical exams, notarization, and other expenses, the total exceeded US$100,000, about US$14,000. Before even starting work, he had to come up with 100,000 yuan, about 14,000 US dollars. Song left China for the first time in December 2024, flying through Uzbekistan to Israel. Israel was still under the threat of war. When Song first heard air raid sirens, he was frightened and rushed to check where missiles were incoming. Some workers around him already used to the alarms kept working. As military conflict escalated in the Middle East in March 2026, the Chinese embassy in Israel again organized evacuations of Chinese citizens. A missile strike in Dimona, where Song worked, on March 21st injured several people. Two days later, a Southern People Weekly reporter asked whether he planned to return to China. He said he was still working and had no immediate plans to go home. For someone buried in debt, leaving the construction site also means losing the income needed to repay it. However, daily life for Chinese construction workers in Israel is far harder than some recruitment ads suggest. I'm a construction worker in Israel from Shuzhou, Jiangsu. A lot of people have messaged me asking whether the work here is exhausting. Let me explain. First, it really is tough. Back home, you might work 10 hours a day. Here, it's 12 hours. I get up after 6am and have to be on site by 7. We work until noon, then have half an hour for lunch. After that, it's straight back to work until 6pm. Then, I buy groceries, cook dinner, and prepare lunch for the next day. By the time I've eaten, it's around 7pm. Then, I still have to wash clothes. I'm busy until about 8.30 before I can lie down. Then, I spend some time on my phone. I usually fall asleep at 9 and get up at 6. So, I get about 8 or 9 hours of sleep. That's the reality for construction workers here. People want to come to Israel because the pay is high. But honestly, if you can't handle this kind of hardship, don't come. The agency fee alone is a lot of money. The vlogger's experience closely matches Song's. In his interview, Song said some tile setters and plasterers in Israel were paid by the amount of work completed. Higher earners could make 40,000 to 50,000 yuan a month, about 5,600 to 7,000 US dollars. That money comes through hard work. Song had to carry materials, clean construction sites, and repeatedly climb stairs every day. After six months of working abroad, he had lost 66 pounds. To repay his debts quickly, he tried to keep monthly living expenses to about 1,000 yuan. Some co-workers spent even less, avoiding outings on days off to save money. By the end of 2025, Song had repaid more than 100,000 yuan owed to friends and about 100,000 in overdue mortgage payments, roughly US$14,000. His remaining online loan debts were still unresolved. Not everyone seeking work abroad eventually finds a job like Song did. Some lose their hard-earned savings to recruitment agencies before they even leave China. CCTV exposed an overseas recruitment scam involving a Beijing agency in April 2026. The company said it could place Chinese applicants in jobs such as driving and carpentry in Australia and New Zealand. It promised easy earnings of 30,000 to 40,000 yuan a month, about 4,200 to 5,600 US dollars. Applicants visited an office with a business license and staff. They took that as proof the company was qualified to arrange overseas work. The agency first collected a 3,000 yuan deposit. It then said applicants had been matched with overseas employers and passed an initial review. It demanded a final payment of 16,800 yuan, bringing the total to 19,800 yuan, about 2,800 US dollars. However, the company did not actually have the required authorization to arrange overseas labor placements. In May of that year, CCTV reported another overseas recruitment fraud case heard by the Shunyi District People's Court in Beijing. It involved more than 10 million yuan, about 1.4 million U.S. dollars, and more than 530 victims nationwide. To convince applicants they could work abroad, those involved signed formal contracts, rented offices, and hired staff. They created the appearance of a legitimate recruitment agency. Many victims had struggled to find work in China and hoped to earn more abroad. Some may have borrowed money to pay the agency fees. They ended up with no job and even more debt. People who cannot afford to study abroad or qualify for an overseas work visa face another more dangerous option, irregular migration to Europe. DutchWelli published an investigation in December 2025. Its reporters traveled to Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Germany, interviewing more than 20 Chinese migrants taking irregular routes. Some had run small businesses devastated by pandemic lockdowns. Others had been unemployed for a long time and struggled to find work. some were in debt, and feared being placed on a court blacklist for failing to repay, which could prevent them from leaving China. Others had lost confidence in China's social conditions, education, healthcare, and their future there. They hoped to start over in another country. A young man from Shandong named Wang Qing was one of them. In the winter of 2024, Wang, then just 19, risked crossing a freezing river on the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. Soaking wet, he hid in dark, wooden mountains and waited to be picked up. Croatian border police had pushed him back during earlier attempts. He eventually paid a smuggler 2,000 euros to get into the European Union. Reaching Germany did not mean life would become easy. Wang struggled to adjust and returned to China for a time. He later tried to reach Germany again, but after more moves and setbacks, he ultimately returned home once more. The Balkan route, once used mainly by migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, has seen more Chinese migrants in recent years. On October 1, 2026, Detektor, an investigative outlet in Bosnia and Herzegovina, published a report on how human smuggling networks recruit Chinese clients on social media. The report interviewed Wei Bin, a 22-year-old Chinese man. He said he had taken part in protests in Jiangyou, Sichuan, and faced repeated police questioning and harassment afterward. He eventually decided to leave China. He found content about irregular migration on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Some brokers were charging as much as 10,000 euros. The investigation also cited figures from the EU's border agency, Frontex. It recorded just three irregular border crossings by Chinese nationals on the Western Balkan route in 2021. That rose to 462 in 2023, 620 in 2024, and 706 in 2025. Another 240 crossings were recorded from January through July 2026. The growing presence of Chinese nationals on this route has drawn attention from European media and border agencies. Some pay 100,000 yuan, about 14,000 US dollars in agency fees, to work on Israeli construction sites under the threat of missiles. Others stay in Africa even after contracting malaria. Young migrants pay smugglers and cross freezing rivers and wooded mountains along European borders, searching for a way forward. For some Chinese people, money meant to build a future must first pay for a chance to leave China. In the CCP's messaging, China is the world's second largest economy, with a comprehensive industrial system, a nationwide high-speed rail network, and modern cities. Officials regularly promote technological breakthroughs, industrial upgrades, and manufacturing achievements, presenting a picture of prosperity and continued improvement. Yet, ordinary Chinese people facing unemployment, debt, repeated job rejections, and pressure to earn a living abroad seem to inhabit a different world. Their struggles rarely appear in CCP messaging. Even openly describing their hardship can bring censorship and account bans.