China's people are on a treadmill

“And the man in the suit has just bought a new car/ From the profit he’s made on your dreams” — Traffic

Leftist online personality Hasan Piker recently took a trip to China, and — like many other influencers who have been there — declared it to be a paradise, praising “abundance style consumption paired up with a centrally controlled economy” and “1950s Soviet era building blocks next to the Gucci store”.1 Meanwhile, pro-China pundits continue to crow about the country’s technological achievements and export performance.

But when you talk to ordinary Chinese people about what their lives or their families’ lives are like these days, a less rosy picture emerges. Helen Gao writes:

Behind the orderliness of everyday life, a quiet desperation simmers. On social media and in private conversations, there is a common refrain: worry over joblessness, wage cuts and making ends meet…

Internationally, China looks strong…That muscular facade is punctured here in China, where despair about dimming economic and personal prospects is pervasive. This contrast between a confident state and its weary population is captured in a phrase Chinese people are using to describe their country: “wai qiang, zhong gan,” roughly translated as “outwardly strong, inwardly brittle.”…

Many now feel the very state policies that have made China appear strong overseas are hurting them. They see a government more concerned with building global influence and dominating export markets than in addressing the challenges of their households…These days, there is a sense of bitter anger among the people at being the voiceless victims of the state’s obsession with world power and beating the United States…The government recently began cracking down on social media content it considered “excessively pessimistic” — a clear sign it is concerned about this public unease undercutting its agenda.

For even more direct insight, I recommend the blog Reading the China Dream, which translates Chinese writing and online commentary. The blog has a good translation of a recent report from a Chinese marketing company on morale among the youth. Here are some excerpts from the bloggers’ summary:

The text translated here is [the] last of a series meant to sum up 2024 and preview 2025…[T]he tone of the text is unsparingly bleak: the China Dream has stalled and no one knows what to do about it…Chinese young people inherited great expectations from China’s phenomenal economic