Like a Neutron Bomb Hit China: 1.5M Villages Gone, Homes and Streets Still There, Nobody in Sight

Let me show you the current state of our village. Let me show you around my village and let you see what the atmosphere is like. Honestly, you can barely see a soul out here, not even an elderly person. You could drive 120 miles an hour down this road and not hit anyone. That's because there's basically nobody on the streets. The young people have all gone away to find work, and the kids have gone to study in the county town. You can see for yourself, the doors are locked up. The whole village is practically empty. Look at that, not a single person on this main street. This is a small shop in our village. And I would guess it makes maybe about 20 yuan a day on average. Another internet user walked into a rural residential area, seeing rows of houses lining the road, but not a single person in sight during broad daylight. Holy crap, there's an echo when I speak. Ah! Damn, something is wrong with this village. Oh man, my voice is echoing. Something is wrong with this village. So many houses, and not a single person. Not a single person in broad daylight. Not a single living soul. You can hear your voice echoing in this village. It's way too weird. Oh my goodness. Something is not right. Something is not right. Someone in the comments section recalled, My grandmother's place is the same. The whole village is empty. And the wildest part is that the two Chinese hackberry trees at the entrance of the village died. I remember when I was a kid, everyone in the village would stay cool under those trees. They were huge. And back then, my grandfather said they were several hundred years old. A netizen from Jiangsu province said, It's not surprising. Out of 80 households in a production brigade, not a single baby has been born in the last nine years. And about 20 elderly people have passed away. Slowly, there's just no one left anywhere. China's rural villages are disappearing at an astonishing speed. On February 24, 2025, Zhu Weidong, deputy director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, admitted at a State Council Information Office press briefing that over the past 40 years, about 1.5 million natural villages and nearly 500,000 administrative villages have vanished across China. That is an average loss of 37,500 natural villages every year. For about 103 every single day, from 2000 to 2010, the number of natural villages in China dropped from about 3.63 million to 2.71 million, a decrease of over 900,000 in a decade. In many places, villages are not demolished. The houses are still there. The streets are still there. But very few people live in them anymore. A netizen from rural Jiangsu province returned to their hometown and found the village completely different from their childhood. I just got back from my hometown today. I just got back from my hometown a few days ago, and now that I'm back in the city, I want to share some thoughts about the countryside today. The rural areas right now are really completely different from the past. I remember when I was a kid in the countryside, in my hometown, nobody ever locked their front doors, right? Back then, it felt like almost every household left their doors wide open during the day. But now when you go back to the countryside, every single door is tightly shut, and you barely see anyone on the road. The only people you see are very elderly men and women who probably have nothing to do at home, so they come out for a stroll. But people in their 50s or 40s, let alone young people, are nowhere to be found. You rarely see anyone. You do not know if they went out for work or just never come out of their houses, but the doors are all tightly bolted. You cannot see a soul on the main street. It's just so quiet. We're a farming village in Jiangsu province, not even one of those remote mountain villages, yet it has turned into this, let alone young people. You cannot find a single young person, except for me. I guess I still count as a young person. Someone commented, It really is like that. Nowadays, being 50 in the village is considered young. The young people have all gone to the cities. On May 22, 2026, Kai Jing published an article documenting the experiences of Zhao Yushun and his companion Zhenzhen as they visited over 1,000 villages and towns across the country. Zhao Yushun found that some villages are no longer lively even during the Chinese New Year. Young people are scattered across the country, trying to make a living, and after their parents pass away, brothers and sisters start their own families in different places, so the old hometown gradually loses its meaning as a gathering place. As the number of children dwindled, rural schools were gradually consolidated and closed, and public services such as shops and health clinics are also facing pressure from population decline, a netizen talked about future changes in China's rural areas. In the next 20 to 30 years, most villages in China will disappear. Why do I say that? You can see that right now. In many rural schools, there are fewer and fewer students, and they are slowly being merged together. When you buy a house in the city, what do you care about the most? You definitely care about the amenities, right? You look at the school district, the nearby schools, hospitals, and subways that come with the property. But conversely, when a place can no longer enroll students in its schools, But when the hospital cannot sustain its own operations, when the surrounding amenities slowly lose their functions one by one, that means the population is declining, the population in this area shrinking. Don't talk about Japan, which has been developing for decades, and still has villages and so many people. Actually, in Japan's villages today, the elderly population is a majority. Right now, our own rural population, the generation born in the 1970s, is a majority. will probably still be the main force living in the countryside over the next 10 to 20 years. Even these people will likely no longer live in the ancestral villages where their roots are. The generations born in the 1980s and the 1990s will definitely move into the cities over time. Those who have the capability will move to bigger places. Honestly, I think this is a choice of the times. In April, the Nangfan Daily reported on Beigang Village in Guangdong Province. The village has a registered population of about 3,000. But a resident population of only 900, with nearly 600 of them being senior citizens aged 60 and above. By the end of 2025, Xiangxi Village in Guangzhou had a resident population of only 123 and more than half are over 60 years old. In August, the People's Daily reported on Yangzhuang Village in Ningxia. A local village primary school built in 1958 was forced to close in September 2021 due to a continuous decline in student enrollment. Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in 2025, China recorded only 7.92 million births and 11.31 million deaths, resulting in a net population decrease of 3.39 million for the year. Compared with the 17.86 million births in 2016, the number of newborns in 2025 dropped by more than half. Today, many rural families have only one child or no one at all. Young people work, marry and have children in cities, and the next generation rarely returns, while the elderly left behind in the villages pass away year after year. The most realistic reason young people in rural areas are unwilling to stay is that they cannot make enough money. Some urban residents yearn for pastoral life, but when they actually return to the countryside Without a stable job and income. Daily life is far less relaxing than they imagined. I've been living in the countryside for a month. I think I'm going to go crazy. If I had to stay in the countryside for a month, I think I would go crazy. Some friends say they yearn for this pastoral life so much, and are so envious of me. Let me tell you, once you actually come back and live here for a period of time, you'll know what the reality is like. Yearn for it. You don't even have any technical skills back home. You will not even know how you starved to death. Really, just like me. I don't know how to do anything. I'm doing okay because I set up a street stall to get some income. But if you did not go out and set up a stall and had no income, would you still yearn for the countryside? Yet you still yearn for it. Many rural families own only a few acres of contracted farmland. And growing grain requires purchasing seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, plus paying for mechanical harvesting and transportation costs. After working hard for an entire year, they might not have much money left over. In 2025, the per capita disposable income of rural residents was 24,456 yuan, averaging about 2,038 yuan per month, which is less than half than that of urban residents. The median income of rural residents was only 20,711 yuan, averaging about 1,726 yuan per month. A netizen documented the life of an elderly rural couple in their 60s. How difficult is the life in the countryside now? How difficult is rural life really now? Can you accept making less than 40 yuan a day? The other day, I was chatting with two elders in the village about their annual income. The couple is in their 60s and in good health, and their income mainly comes from 3 sources. First, they raise 9 pigs, and each pig brings in about 3,000 yuan from start to finish over the year. Of course, that also includes over 2,000 pounds of corn they grow themselves, plus a whole lot of sweet potatoes. They also use some other vegetables to feed the pigs, and they have to buy feed when the pigs are small. Second, the cash crops mainly include peanuts, rapeseed, and chili peppers, all three combining bringing in an annual income of about 3,000 yuan. The third source of income is local market days, which happens once every five days around here, where they go to sell some vegetables. They also forage for wild goods in the mountains to sell, bringing in an average of 300 to 400 yuan per month. That comes out to just over 4,000 yuan a year. Adding all these sources of income together, it's around 34,000 yuan total. You might ask why they don't plant more or raise more or go out to work. You think they do not want to? Their time and energy are limited, and they can only do so much. Going out to work is even more unrealistic. If you can still do this much work when you are old, I would say you're incredible. The elderly couple's annual income is about 34,000 yuan, out of which they still have to cover the input costs for pig farming and crop cultivation, and their day-to-day labor does not come with a separate wage. Zhao Yushun, interviewed by Kai Jing, also talked about kiwifruit orchards in In Shanxi province. A group of rural women work eight-hour days only to receive a wage of 50 yuan, with some wearing pain relief patches on their shoulders and lower backs as they keep working. In some areas, elderly people taking on odd jobs earn daily wages of only 80 to 120 yuan, And finding 10 days of work in a month is considered lucky. With limited income in the countryside, young people face economic pressures like bridal gifts, housing, and cars when getting married. Some families have to drain their life savings or even borrow money just to help their kids get married. Many parents therefore pin their hopes on their children's education, hoping they will enter the city and avoid repeating the lives of the previous generation. Zhao Yushun recalled that when he was young, his grandparents told him he must hold a pen in the future, not a hoe. Yet even if some young people manage to pass college entrance exams and enter the city, they may not necessarily secure stable jobs. After losing their jobs, wanting to return to the village means facing gossip from relatives and neighbors. A rural youth, who worked in Beijing for over a decade, shared his experience. Returning to the countryside isn't actually some peaceful getaway, especially for those of us who grew up in rural areas. Returning to the countryside is really not peaceful or idyllic at all, especially for kids like us from rural backgrounds. Actually, my biggest pressure is not weeding or getting rid of pests because I come from a rural background myself and have done all those chores. Today, I want to talk about the hardest threshold for a rural child after leaving home, facing the judgments of acquaintances, relatives, and friends in the village. The emotional torment of those gazes is actually far more exhausting than doing farm work. Chinese people care a lot about saving face and back in the village, that feeling gets amplified significantly. After studying hard for over a decade and working in Beijing for another decade, everyone naturally assumed that as a child who walked out of the village, I would definitely settle down outside and never return, acting as a successful person. But in the middle of all that, I lost my job and when I decided to go back and stay in the village for a while, I had to do a huge amount of mental preparation. Another person who had lived in the countryside for a long time also talked about interpersonal relationships in a tight-knit society. The countryside is the most vicious place. The countryside is actually the most vicious place. I'm a rural person myself. I have put down roots and lived in the countryside for over a decade. And in the early years, I could not leave because of my family. If I could have left, I would not have wanted to stay in the countryside for a single day. Some people say, oh, I yearn for pastoral life. Go ahead. Go try it. In the countryside, if your family does not have high standing and you have a different surname, try it. Doing anything is extremely difficult. The countryside is where people truly show that they despise you for being poor and fear you for being rich, truly. I'm not exaggerating when I say this. It is a fact, right? In the countryside, compared to urban people who live behind closed doors, whether I'm doing well or poorly, no one else knows. In villages, as long as your family even has the slightest bit of trouble, the whole village knows within half an hour, which is even faster than current 5G networks. You still want to go live in the countryside? Go ahead. I will not stop you at all. Go try it. Netizens commented, The two things rural people care about most in life are being afraid of being laughed at by others and laughing at others behind their backs. At the end of 2025, China's rural resident population dropped to 451 million, a decrease of about 13.69 million from the previous year, and the national urbanization rate rose 67.89%. China's long-standing urban-rural divide is closely linked to the dual urban-rural system established by the Chinese Communist Party. In the 1950s, through agricultural collectivization, people's communes, and state purchase and marketing of grain, the CCP integrated rural production into a highly centralized management system, While restricting farmers' free migration through the household registration system, farmers bore the burden of supplying grain for urban industrialization while remaining long excluded from urban welfare systems. After the reform and opening up, the household responsibility system restored independent management for farming households, but the gap in urban-rural registration and public resource allocation persisted. A massive number of farmers entered cities to provide cheap labor for manufacturing and construction, yet they have consistently struggled to gain social security equal to that of urban residents. The 2025 Migrant Worker Monitoring Survey report shows that the total number of migrant workers in China reached 300 million, with about 180 million working away from their hometowns Their average age is 43.3, and those aged 50 and above account for 32%. As the real estate market continues to adjust, construction employment declines, and manufacturing production methods change. Middle-aged and older migrant workers face mounting employment pressures. Some have not continuously contributed to urban employee pension insurance and lack sufficient retirement pensions after stepping down from work. In the past, they could at least return to the countryside to retire. Their hometowns required no rent. A few acres of contracted land could grow food and vegetables, and they could raise chickens in the yard to lower daily expenses. Yet some migrant workers away from home might not even manage to keep their homes in their hometowns. On April 30, 2025, Yang Qinghu, a villager from Xiyi town in Sichuan province, was working in Shanghai when he discovered via remote surveillance that an excavator had entered his family courtyard and flattened his house. According to the paper, the local town government explained that the construction contractor mistakenly thought compensation had been finalized, calling it a mistaken demolition. Yang Qinghu presented his house ownership certificate and land use certificate, stating that he did not oppose road construction, but his house was knocked down before demolition compensation negotiations were completed. In February 2026, media reported on land acquisition and demolition dispute in Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province. The locality involved rural demolitions due to open-pit coal mine development. A villager named Li had worked in Zhejiang for a long time and returned to his hometown in 2025 because of the demolition. He owns only a single rural home and was unwilling to sign documents before resettlement issues were resolved. According to his account, in July 2025, construction workers damaged his house while demolishing his younger brother's home. In December of the same year, his own home was sealed off, and his furniture and appliances were moved away, leaving the family forced to stay temporarily with relatives. Li expected to receive 500,000 to 600,000 yuan in compensation, but that might only be enough to rebuild a house, and there was no trace of where a new residential plot would be located. If he stayed in the countryside, he could at least grow grain to sustain his life. If he moved to the town without a stable job, what would he rely on for future living and retirement? In November 2025, a land lease dispute occurred in Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province. According to media reports, villagers questioned why certain farmland and mountainous terrain were leased out long-term for pig farming and solar power projects without rental revenues being distributed fairly. A villager using the pseudonym Zhao Xinyi stated that the land lease lasted for 30 years and involved over 2 million yuan in rent, but the villagers did not receive the money. On November 12, villagers and construction workers entered a standoff. The reports indicated that at least one person was injured, while more than 10 others were briefly detained by police. Farmers have toiled on the land for generations, yet the land never truly belongs to them. Under the guise of collective ownership, the CCP firmly brings rural land under control of state power. Once land acquisition, demolition, and commercial development are involved, the destiny of the land is often decided by local governments and village cadres holding collective resources. Farmers may not equitably share in the profits of land development, Well, they must bear the cost of losing their land and homes entirely. Rural old-age security has long been inadequate, with many elderly individuals relying primarily on the basic urban-rural resident pension of 163 yuan per month, farming income, and support from the children to get by. Some people in their 70s and 80s still have to farm, raise livestock, or take on odd jobs. With young people away for long periods, left behind seniors not only lack daily care but must also keep tending the fields. Once the elderly grow too weak physically, some farmland gradually goes unmanaged. In April 2025, the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau of Longkou City, Yantai Shandong, disclosed that the proportion of farmers aged 60 and above in local mountainous rural areas reached a staggering 70%, while the outflow rate of laborers under 50 exceeded 90%. Over 300 acres of orchards have already been left abandoned locally. Many elderly farmers are unable to afford the cost of restoring cultivation. Young people are unwilling to to return to farm. The local agriculture bureau also ran the numbers. Planting two seasons of wheat and corn on an acre of land requires an annual input about US$13,000, and based on 2024 purchase prices, the net annual profit is less than US$420. 20 US dollars. A 2024 survey by the Standing Committee of the Gansu Province People's Congress also found that among local agricultural producers, only about 10% were under 45, while those aged 45 to 60 accounted for about 81%. Among the abandoned land remediated by Gansu in 2023, land left fallow due to out-migration or a lack of labor reached 204,100 acres, accounting for 29% of the remediated area. Some farmland is choked with weeds and has broken down irrigation facilities, meaning restoring production requires extra investment. Mountainous plots are fragmented with high mechanization costs, so even if someone is willing to contract them, they may not secure reasonable returns. Some prime arable land has been taken up by industrial and infrastructure construction, while other remote plots are left fallow due to labor shortages putting long-term agricultural production capacity under pressure. In 2025, China imported about 112 million tons of soybeans, while domestic production was only about 20.91 million tons, with imports exceeding domestic output by more than five times. Soybeans are tied to cooking oil, As well as feed supplies for livestock industries, such as pig and chicken farming. If major exporting countries face severe natural disasters, international shipping is disrupted by war, or trade frictions drive up import costs, domestic feed, cooking oil, and meat prices could all take a hit. Back then, the CCP won peasant support under the slogan, Land to the Tiller. Following land reform, however, it brought land back under collective control, placing agricultural production and food distribution under administrative authority. The Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune Movement pushed rural China into a catastrophe, leaving countless farmers dead in the ensuing famine. After the reform and opening up, the CCP relaxed directive control over agricultural production, allowing farming to recover, but land ownership was never returned to farmers. For decades, whenever land cultivated with farmers' sweat was involved in expropriation and development, its purpose was still predominantly directed by local governments, and the massive fortunes generated by land appreciation were difficult to distribute fairly to farmers. The CCP endlessly promotes rural development while failing to resolve the most fundamental issues of farmers' land rights and social security. Over the past few decades, Chinese farmers not only failed to truly master their own land, but today, even the final homeland their ancestors relied on for survival is gradually vanishing.