The number of Chinese who believe that “hard work is rewarded” has collapsed among those born in the 1980s and 1990s.
They call themselves “rat people,” Chinese slang for young graduates who have given up on conventional success. They join the “lying-flat generation,” who reject the “996” grind (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week), refuse to date or marry, and scrape by on minimal consumption. It’s a dark, sobering self-portrait of a generation that was supposed to be China’s future.
The economic numbers explain much of the despair. China’s unemployment rate sits at 5.1 percent overall, but 16.5 percent for those aged 16 to 24. Youth unemployment peaked at 18.9 percent in August 2024 and remains elevated. And roughly 70 percent of unemployed 20-to-24-year-olds hold university degrees, as China’s skyrocketing higher education sector now churns out more degrees than there are jobs. Over 12 million graduates flooded the job market in 2025 alone – and even more will graduate this year.
China built the world’s largest higher education system. Enrollment jumped from 17 percent to 60 percent in two decades, and the number of university graduates rose from 7.5 million in 2018 to an expected 12.7 million in 2026. But the economy can’t absorb what the universities produce.
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The result is a generation opting out. Some take temporary work while searching for something better. Others flee into graduate school to delay the reckoning. But a growing number have simply quit trying.
Survey evidence in the World Values Survey and China Family Panel Studies confirms the generational rupture. Chinese born after 1990 are far less likely to view work as “a duty to society” than their parents’ generation. The number of Chinese who believe that “hard work is rewarded” has collapsed among those born in the 1980s and 1990s.
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The growing share of youth “lying flat” is especially alarming given how few young people China has. The demographics are working against Beijing. China’s fertility rate fell from above seven births per woman in the early 1960s to about 1.0 in 2024 – well below the replacement level. Births dropped to 7.9 million in 2025, the lowest since 1949. The total population fell by 3.4 million to 1.4 billion. The number of women aged 20 to 34, who account for about 85 percent of births, is predicted to shrink from 105 million in 2025 to just 58 million by 2050.
Beijing’s attempted fixes verge on parody. A 13 percent value-added tax on condoms and birth control, ending a three-decade exemption, took effect in January 2026. A $12.7 billion child-care subsidy offers families a lump-sum payment of about $500 per child under three. Neither policy addresses why young people aren’t having children: they can’t afford homes, can’t find decent jobs, and don’t see a future worth bringing children into.
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China’s economic model emphasizes state direction and strategic control, and that’s increasingly out of step with a younger generation whose values around work, family, and personal fulfillment are rapidly changing. China can censor pessimism but it can’t manufacture hope.
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The question is whether a state-led model can deliver the flexibility young workers need – or whether a generation of “rat people” represents the new normal.