No one likes to work without receiving salary – or, worse, having to pay to go to the office. But that’s what is happening in China: Unemployed young people are paying companies to pretend they work in their offices.
In major Chinese cities is gaining strength a new and surprising tendency: young unemployed adults pay companies to be in offices pretending to have a job.
The phenomenon “Pretend to Work”(“ Pretend to work ”), is spreading quickly, at a time when China’s economy faces difficulties and the rate of Young unemployment, Currently estimated at more than 14%, it remains high.
The “pretends” pay between 30 and 50 yuan a day (about 3.5 to 6 euros) to have access to work spaces Shared equipped with computers, Wi-Fi, meeting rooms and coexistence zones. In some cases, the service includes lunch and small snacks.
Many of these young people seek maintain work routinesand recover a sense of dignity and communityeven without actually doing any real work. In other cases, account, use these services to be able to to present evidence that employees are.
One of these cases is that of Shui Zhou30 -year -old from Dongguan, whose restoration business has bankrupt in 2024. Since April, he has paid 30 Yuan a day to use a company’s office with the suggestive name of Pretend to Work Company, where he spends a long hours with five more people in similar situations.
“I feel very happy. It’s like we all work together,” says Zhou, who explains that the experience gives him discipline, spirit of camaraderie and that reassures the familywho is now less worried, knowing that there is “a place to go to work.”
Some users look at these services as launch platforms for future opportunities. Zhou, for example, devotes much of the time to Develop skills in artificial intelligencehoping to increase its employability.
Entrepreneurs behind these services have often gone through unemployment situations. Feiyuowner of the pretend to Work Company of Dongguan, had a retail business that collapsed During Covid-19 pandemia.
Feiyu underwent a depression and felt aimlessly until he decided to create his co-works space, which opened its doors in April. In less than a month, it sold out all available spaces.
“What my company offers is not a secretary or a job, but the dignity of not being a useless person“Says the 30 -year -old businessman.
According to Feiyu, about 40% of its customers are Newly Licensed who need TESTS FOR Acting a Internship to complete the degree. Some universities require employment contract or internship proof within one year after the degree to deliver the diploma.
Xiaowen Tang23, fits this group. Recently licensed by a Shanghai University, rented a secretary for a month, and sent photos of the office as an internship proof, when actually wrote online novels to make money. “If it is to pretend, it pretends to the end“, Diz Tang.
Biao Xiangdirector of the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Germany, says that the tendency to pretend to work in China originates from the “feeling of frustration and impotence”Regarding the lack of job opportunities for those who have just completed their academic background.
“Pretending to work is a carapace that young people find for themselves, which creates a slight distance from the dominant society and gives them some space,” explains Xiang.
For thousands of young people in China, where there are currently cleaning employees, paying to “pretend they work” offers structure, company and a fragile sense of purpose in a difficult work market.
However, Feiyu questions long -term viability and The ethics of your operationwhich considers it to be like a social experience who uses lies to maintain respectability, but “allows some people to find the truth”: these false workplaces can become true starting points.
