Why many young people in China pay to go to an office and pretend that they work

“I feel very happy,” says the Zhou. “It's as if we were working together as a group.”

These types of establishments are already appearing in the main cities of China, such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu and Kunming. They usually look like completely functional offices, equipped with computers, Internet access, meetings and tea rooms.

Attendees can use computers to find work or to try to launch their own companies. Sometimes, the daily rate, which usually ranges between 30 and 50 yuan, includes lunch, refreshments and drinks.

The popularity of these establishments is due to the fact that Chinese youth unemployment remains persistently high, exceeding 14 %.

This means that even highly qualified university graduates have difficulty finding work.

It is expected that the number of graduates in China that are incorporated into the labor market this year reaches 12.22 million according to official data, a record figure.

Christian Yao, a professor of the School of Administration at the Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand, is an expert in the Chinese economy.

“The phenomenon of pretending that you work is now very common,” he says. Due to economic transformation and mismatch between education and the labor market, young people need these places to think about their next steps or to perform sporadic work such as transition.

Work simulation companies are one of the transition solutions.

Zhou discovered the work simulation company while sailing for the Xiaohongshu social network. The young man felt that the office environment would improve his self -discipline and have been there for more than three months.

Zhou sent photos from the office to his parents and says they feel much calmer with their unemployment situation.

While attendees can arrive and leave whenever they want, the young man usually reaches the office between 8:00 and 9:00. Sometimes it does not leave until 23:00, and only leaves after the manager leaves.

The other attendees have become friends, he adds. And he tells that when someone is busy, for example, looking for work, he works hard, but when they have free time they chat, joke and play. Often they also have dinner together after work.

Zhou says he likes to be part of a team and that he feels much happier than before going to this office.

In Shanghai, Xiaowen Tang rented a work station in a fictitious company in Shanghai for a month earlier this year. The 23 -year -old graduated from the University last year and has not yet found full -time job.

Its university has a tacit norm: students must sign a employment contract or present a voucher of an internship within a year after graduating; Otherwise, they will not receive the diploma.

The young woman sent a picture of the office scene to the university as proof of her internship. Actually, he paid the daily fee and sat in the office to write novels online to earn some money.

“If you are going to pretend, pretend until the end,” says Tang.

Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, affirms that the Chinese tendency to simulate work arises from the lack of job opportunities.

“Simulate is a protective shell that young people create, establishing a certain distance with society and giving themselves a small space.”

The owner of the company “Pretend to Work” in the city of Dongguan is Feiyu (pseudonym), 30 years old. “What I sell is not a job, but the dignity of not being a useless person,” he says.

He himself was unemployed in the past, after an retail business he had to close during the Covid-19 pandemic. “I was very depressed and it was a bit self -destructive,” he recalls. “I wanted to change the situation, but I couldn't do anything.”

In April of this year Feiyu began to announce “pretend to work”, and in a month all jobs were full. Those who are interested should apply.

Feiyu states that 40% of their clients are recent university graduates who come to take photos to demonstrate their old tutors that make internships. A smaller number goes to deal with the pressure of their parents.

And the remaining 60% are freelancers, many of which are digital nomads, including those working for large electronic commerce companies and specialized editors in cyberspace.

The youngest are 25 years old and the average age is around 30.

Officially, these workers are known as “Flexible Employment Professionals”, a group that also includes chóferes and truckers.

In the long term, Feiyu states that he doubts if the business will remain profitable. Instead, he prefers to see it more as a social experiment.

“The business uses lies to maintain respectability, but allows some people to discover the truth,” he says. “If we only helped users to prolong their acting skills, we would be complicit in a hoax.”

“Just helping them transform their false workplace into a real starting point, this social experiment can fulfill their promise.”

Zhou now dedicates most of his time to improve his skills in artificial intelligence (AI).

He says that he has noticed that some companies demand the mastery of AI tools and believes that acquiring these skills will facilitate finding full time.

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