The loneliness crisis in China

A few weeks ago, China's quintessential polemicist, Ai Weiwei, returned to Beijing after years in exile. Speaking to Western newspapers about his visit, he said he felt more welcome in authoritarian China than in democratic Germany. On the streets of the Chinese capital, locals struck up friendly, informal conversations with him. In Germany, by contrast, hardly anyone invited him home for dinner during the ten years he lived there.

On my trips to China, I too have experienced that spontaneity of social interactions. When I walk through the streets of a Chinese city or town, I know that some interesting encounter is likely to occur. I also know that I am just a visitor. That my perspective is not shaped by the routine of living in the country, but by the exceptional nature of the trip. And that for a large part of the Chinese population, the overwhelming feeling that pervades their daily lives is loneliness.

The topic comes up frequently in conversations. Most of the people involved are young people living in urban areas. A few years ago, in northeastern China, a girl told me she had lived in her city for years and didn't have a single friend. I thought it was an exceptional case. But every year I meet more Chinese people who are in a similar situation. A few weeks ago, it went viral that one of the most downloaded apps in China is called "Are you dead?" and it's used to notify your contacts if you haven't been in touch for days.The loneliness economy in China grows every year, with restaurants offering the quintessential communal dish, hot pot, for individual diners, or with Chinese girls having romantic relationships with boys made with artificial intelligence.

Within the wheel of endless effort

China is a major geopolitical and economic power. But its society has fragmented. In 2000, 3% of the population lived alone, while that figure has now risen to 20%. Over the past few decades, more than 250 million people have left rural China for the cities, in the largest migration in history. This human movement has served to industrialize China and free women from family control. But it has also broken the community ties and systems of care and social mutual support that had existed in China for centuries. Chinese children now move to cities dozens of kilometers from their parents, in a model similar to that of the United States—another society suffering from a loneliness crisis.

Urban Chinese youth, moreover, are exhausted. Many feel trapped in an endless cycle of effort (the so-called neijuanThey work long hours to save up to buy an apartment, a requirement for getting married. But the Chinese economy isn't doing as well as it used to; in fact, it's more expensive. Some have even given up on marriage altogether, the social pillar that sustained China's social structure for centuries. Weddings in China have fallen by more than 60% since 2013. The birth rate has also halved.Many women no longer want to get married. Single people are buying pets. Most of these young Chinese people grew up as only children. Their loneliness seems likely to last for years.