A weakening economy has left many disillusioned, a state of mind expressed privately and across the heavily controlled internet in lowered expectations and quiet anxiety.
Some of that may now be surfacing in more troubling ways.
In March, a man drove a heavy construction vehicle through an outdoor market in a Beijing suburb, reportedly killing several people. In June, a small aircraft crashed into a prominent office building in the capital, killing the pilot and injuring 13 others in what may have been a suicide. And last month a man was arrested in the southern city of Guangzhou after allegedly slashing the faces of multiple women in a busy shopping district.
Incidents like these are rare in China and heavily censored, making motives difficult, if not impossible, to discern. But in a country where it’s dangerous to vent at government policies, I can’t shake the sense that people are instead beginning to take their anger and frustration out on one another.
Intensely focused on competing with the United States, Beijing is pouring resources into building up its advanced manufacturing and technology industries, seeing them as the future drivers of national growth. During a summit meeting with President Trump at the White House last week, President Xi Jinping of China spoke confidently, saying China was “breaking new ground” in his modernization drive.
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But much of the broader economy remains weak. Unemployment is high, especially for younger people, and wages are stagnating. Households still reeling from the long-term collapse of the country’s real estate market are cutting back on spending. The government this year set its lowest annual growth target since 1991.
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The impulse to find someone to blame is clearly evident in the viral doxxing phenomenon called “ba,” or “to strip.” In these campaigns, which have intensified in recent months, posses of digital sleuths comb through the backgrounds of people who have attracted attention for their academic or professional achievements, “stripping” them down in a hunt for evidence that connections, fraud or favoritism paved their way.
In late July, a 29-year-old podcaster named Zhuge Yiyang — a Ph.D. candidate at Boston College — went viral after she interviewed the director Christopher Nolan about his movie “The Odyssey.” Ms. Zhuge had been admired by many of her online followers as proof that hard work and merit lead to success, and she was widely praised for the intellectual depth of her questions in the interview.
Soon, however, the online stripping started, leading to accusations that she had plagiarized material in her podcasts and writing. Ms. Zhuge has disputed some of the accusations, but canceled public appearances and described herself as emotionally exhausted.
Often, the scrutiny seems less about exposing wrongdoing than about a reflexive resentment of perceived elites who have become avatars of an economy in which many people see their own prospects narrowing. Other recent targets have ranged from a Chinese actress to prominent doctors and a Harvard graduate who last year became the first Chinese woman to speak at a commencement ceremony at the university. The young woman called for global unity in her speech but was soon accused of using family privilege and connections to further her academic career.
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Fraud, nepotism and plagiarism are hardly new in China, nor is the tendency for people to take aim at perceived inequities online. What feels new is how automatic and ferocious the hunt for them has become as sensitivity rises over who gets ahead — and how — at a time of pervasive economic anxiety.
Bitterness is intensifying between men and women, too. In online forums men complain that more of the pressure from the worsening economic prospects falls on them. They rail against feminists, and some have even called for a men’s rights awakening.
Male frustration spilled into the streets in August when groups of young men, apparently protesting the effeminization of youth culture, reportedly gathered in the city of Chongqing outside the office of a talent agency that handled boy bands. After police detained one of the men, the protesters marched down a major road, demanding his release and chasing, shoving and kicking female fans waiting outside the agency. Some took photos of the women, which were digitally altered as pornographic images and disseminated online.
Studies suggest that many Chinese men, particularly those with fewer resources, face mounting difficulty fulfilling traditional expectations to marry and become stable breadwinners. A man is often expected to have an apartment and a car before he can secure a wife. For many, that’s becoming nearly impossible.
In some parts of the country, a groom’s family may also be expected to pay a “bride price,” a payment to the bride’s family as part of the marriage agreement. A survey of young male migrant workers, which was published in February, put the average price at around 130,000 yuan ($19,000) — about six times the respondents’ average annual savings.
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Marriage prospects are worsened by the government’s former one-child policy which, combined with a traditional preference for male heirs, led many families to abort female fetuses, skewing China’s gender balance. The policy was ended a decade ago, but single men of marriageable age outnumbered unwed women by as much as two to one in some parts of the country, according to the most recent detailed census in 2020. Last year, China still had nearly 29 million more men than women.
I grew up in a China whose ascent was powered not just by factories, investment and growing incomes, but by the sense that all boats were rising. Even if some rose faster, people could see those who had made it and imagine joining their ranks. They could look forward to building families and bringing up children whose lives would be better than their own.
What’s disturbing about China today is not simply that those expectations are fading, but that success itself is cause for suspicion and outright hostility: If I am falling behind, someone else must be getting ahead at my expense; if I can’t meet the expectations society places on men, a woman must be to blame.
The Chinese state has enormous power to steer the economy and shape public life. What it cannot simply command back into existence is good will between its citizens.
Economic downturns end. A fraying social fabric may prove harder to mend.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 3:18 AM Author: Abusive tan sex offender sanctuary
ljl wtf cant birdshits just stfu abt china? its over, and china isnt the reason the west is shit and declining, esp all the probs in Us arent caused by china but the US congress gives $300m a year for outright propoganda against gorgeous china which is still growin 4-5% and has the economy that is the envy of the world as it is 40% of world manufacturing, not a kike horror shitshow of fake money and niggas blowing ur brains out and feminazi women charging u with rape
A country supposedly dominated by engineer types in the upper echelons of politics and when it comes to capital allocation they do it primarily along political lines.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 9:34 AM Author: Infuriating cerebral public bath volcanic crater
china is one of those countries that you can just tell is a despotic shithole just from all those duplex buildings scattered randomly across the country without any regard for planning like hotels on a monopoly board.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 9:37 AM Author: Rose floppy jewess wrinkle
Planned cities mostly suck and china centrally plans everything to the hilt. The best cities in the world were built pre-20th century before urban planning had been invented.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 9:39 AM Author: Rose floppy jewess wrinkle
Yeah US cities do suck, and the more of them that was built after planning and zoning were implemented, the more they suck. The only interesting US cities were built pre-zoning. San Francisco, Charleston, Boston, NYC, Philly
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:02 AM Author: Abusive tan sex offender sanctuary
Chink cities are 180, Shanghai and BJ are worldclass, marvels of humanity. Birdshits cld not even dream in living in such clean orderly safe cities with amazing food, culture, no niggas
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:06 AM Author: Rose floppy jewess wrinkle
They look horrific, just a bunch of wide fucking megahighways you have to crawl like a bug underground to get from one windswept section to another. The excellent public transit relatively high densities make up for this somewhat.
They used to have cool old sections but I'm guessing all the hutong neighborhoods have been torn down by now and all thats left of the old coty is the Bund.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 11:07 AM Author: Abusive tan sex offender sanctuary
this is BS, chink cities all have nice 180 parks and gorgeous buildings and footpaths and shit, its a pleasure walking arnd any chink city, they all have cool pedestrian streets and stuff
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:29 AM Author: Outnumbered sooty patrolman property
ROFL @ this racial resentment. if china is so great, why dont you live there? you barely are there. and spare me the BS that you dont deserve it. you don't deserve anything you worthless drunk sex pest Dalit. you just use china as a proxy to attack whites and america because you couldn't hack it here and got Cornell 7'd by your big law firm.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 11:08 AM Author: Abusive tan sex offender sanctuary
noap nigga, i 100% dont deserve to live in china and i dont want to pollute them with my inferior DNA. its true and im just being honest
china is 180, its the best country ive ever seen, there's no dispute, its even BETTER now than ebfore, the gap is so wide between china and any other country its a bit of a joke now
Date: October 2nd, 2026 9:36 AM Author: Tripping parlor jew
how many of these "THIS is the year China is in trouble!" articles have there been over the past 15 years? it's basically a NYT/WSJ jewish media narrative special at this point
Date: October 2nd, 2026 9:40 AM Author: Pink underhanded ticket booth boiling water
this.
Like the country that manufacturers everything for the entire world is suddenly going to crash and burn because demand for all the shit they manufacture and produce is suddenly going to collapse
Date: October 2nd, 2026 9:41 AM Author: Abusive tan sex offender sanctuary
its been for 40 years now, and the funny thing is its public info that the US budget annually includes like $300m for anti china propoganda, the US govt/CIA litearlly feeds these retarded stories and morons believe this crap cause amerishits truly are the dumbest mother fukrers on earth
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:00 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
An equal number of articles came out over the years that China was some unstoppable force. Turns out they really suck at managing an economy. They're terrified of political ramifications so they constantly put good money in after bad and nobody ever reports legitimate numbers upstream. Something like 20% of global gdp in the 2010s was just made up Chinese credit extended from one Chinese entity to another. They definitely went to flat or negative growth in 2021/22 and they're percentage of output compared to the US took a sharp departure around that time.
The worst part is nothing is ever getting fixed. They need to write down some of that debt and they can't. They do not have and will never have a domestic market, which essentially means constant political friction with international partners. They have to undercut manufacturers in trading partner nations because they have to sell goods abroad otherwise there's no money. That pisses of trade partners. They can't easily shift their manufacturing because nobody is willing to take the political short term pain that would cause. Oh yeah and the county will be mostly geriatric in 20 years.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:26 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
Like a big circular cluster fuck they own most of their own debt. But because they're ultimately state run enterprises, Chinese banks will lend to these large failed endeavors to keep them afloat, when they should be allowed to fail and the resources allocated to more profitable sectors.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:53 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
Because otherwise it's just state sponsored welfare at the expense of more productive endeavors in the economy. SI is a good example. China has multiple times more electrical capacity than the US, they have these massive construction companies. But they weren't nimble enough to switch over to data centers, so inexplicably China is near the US with advanced models but 4 times behind on computational capacity.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 11:12 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
Chinese GDP as a percentage of the US peaked in 2021. Meanwhile the US saw massive gains. So it wasn't just that China stalled out, the US also took off like a rocket. I suck at making predictions but every country on earth is currently grappling with what to do with population decline. SI appears to be the chosen solution. China did not build out the infrastructure to support their own domestic development. They're saddled with debt which makes it very hard to switch gears. Their demographics are terrible. Eventually we'll see currency swapped out for computational tokens and that will probably also be a US controlled system. I see decay in China.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:22 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
China is probably going to see 1-2% growth this year. They have some advanced sectors where they truly are world class and cutting edge. I don't think anyone build ships as cheaply and efficiently. It's the actual management aspects that fuck them. Nobody wants to take a political hit for a possible failure so they paper over the issues.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:48 AM Author: Tripping parlor jew
who gives a fuck about some ill-defined "management issues" when the hard fact on the ground is they are decades ahead of every country on earth in manufacturing at this point? nobody comes close to touching their breadth from top to bottom, whether it's $2 chotskies or humanoid robots. and nobody has the capability to come close any time soon either. the rest of the world has no answer to shenzhen + the raw number of high IQ people who live in china
Date: October 2nd, 2026 11:05 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
Didn't you read what I wrote above? There is no Chinese domestic market. So their manufacturing prowess has to come at the expense of other nations. They don't have this lure any longer of promising companies future access to their markets. They've alienated just about everyone undercutting markets. Is that sustainable, particularly when your population is going to get old as fuck over the next decade?
Date: October 2nd, 2026 11:24 AM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
Yeah they MUST export and their one comparative advantage is currently cheap organized labor. What happens to a low level manufacturing economy when the population is 80 and other countries have robots making goods for considerably cheaper?
Date: October 2nd, 2026 12:01 PM Author: lurid anal narrative
it is a rather strange (and true) fact that china does both tcotchkes and EVs, that it has come to dominate advanced sectors without letting go of primitive ones. totally blows Ricardian comparative advantage out of the water
Date: October 2nd, 2026 12:23 PM Author: Lilac alcoholic really tough guy
There is a legitimate domestic market for Chinese cars. And that's an example of what they do really well. They probably stole most of the initial IP, then they refined the product and applied their expertise in manufacturing and synergy with supply chains to lower the price. The article makes it seem like they're average at productivity when they're clearly ahead of the game.
However, it's also a product that will see fierce protectionism from any trading partners.
Date: October 2nd, 2026 11:09 AM Author: Abusive tan sex offender sanctuary
rofl china is not just winning its DOMINATING in almost every single industry that matters u dumb faggot
and u are a lying sack of shit lying abt china gorgeous GDP u dumb benchod u shld be raped by chinese pigs
China's China GDP Growth Rate reached 4.7% year-on-year for the first half of 2026, staying within the government's official full-year target range of 4.5% to 5.0%.
📊 Economic Performance Overview
• Q1 Growth: Started strong at 5.0% year-on-year.
• Q2 Growth: Eased to 4.3% year-on-year (0.9% quarter-on-quarter).
• Full-Year Outlook: Projected between 4.4% and 4.6% by major institutions like the World Bank and IMF
Date: October 2nd, 2026 10:08 AM Author: Mind-boggling Abode Brethren
In online forums men complain that more of the pressure from the worsening economic prospects falls on them. They rail against feminists, and some have even called for a men’s rights awakening.