In 2025, China didn’t experience a deafening crash, but the lives of ordinary people were slowly becoming colder. There were no signs of a monumental economic collapse or widespread street protests, but a silent downturn was unfolding in people’s paychecks, hospital payment windows, closed shops, silent social media platforms, and queues of people resigning. Prosperity didn’t vanish overnight, it quietly slipped away unnoticed.
On the last day of 2025, voices of complaints filled Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Douyin. “Yesterday we were at work, today the factory shut down, the boss ran away,” lamented a netizen from Guangdong in a video. In the video, dozens of workers gathered in a silent, helpless manner around machines that had stopped.
In Shenyang, Liaoning Province, Mr. Zhao, a state-owned enterprise employee, said, “I work for a state-owned enterprise in Shenyang, this month we haven’t paid social security or housing fund.” Another local civil servant added, “Salaries are paid on time, but performance bonuses have been cut long ago, yet the housing fund account shows 600,000 yuan. We stare at the numbers and lose sleep.”
Liu Xin, who works in the education system in Shenyang, disclosed to Epoch Times, “Liaoning has not paid performance bonuses for five months, the finance of Sujiatun District government is in severe shortage.” Ms. Sun from Qianjiang, Hubei, used to be a substitute teacher and said, “I joined a state-owned enterprise in July, but haven’t received a penny till now. I’m just hanging there, almost non-existent.” Ms. Liu from Dalian said, “Dalian teachers have had social security and housing funds withheld for several years. Others used to envy us before, but who dares to envy now?”
These complaints are not isolated incidents among mainland Chinese, but signs of financial pressure from the Chinese Communist Party filtering down through various levels and regions. According to the official report “Financial Operations Situation” released by the Shenyang Municipal Finance Bureau on December 2, as of November 2025, the city’s general public budget revenue reached 73.83 billion yuan, a decrease of about 1.7% year-on-year, with local tax revenue falling by about 5.4%; and government fund budget revenue was 8.95 billion yuan, a decrease of about 34.2% year-on-year. This indicates that the financial tightening is trickling down through the urban administrative system, ultimately affecting the paychecks of ordinary people.
As “maintaining rigid expenditures” becomes a key phrase in recent official documents of the Chinese Communist Party, delays in performance bonuses for teachers, reduced performance for civil servants, and hospital staff buying their own supplies have become common in many places. A nurse in Jiangxi commented in an online forum, “Buying gauze on our own is not news, but once we get used to it, what will become of us?”
Wang Ying, a county-level state-owned enterprise employee, revealed to journalists that discussions on financial arrangements were held in June. He said, “The minutes of the meeting stated ‘decide when to pay housing fund and year-end performance bonuses to ensure basic operations,’ but there was no specific timetable.” The term “decide when” has become an uncertain waiting period in the real lives of many within the system.
Beyond the financial sector, Chinese jobs themselves are becoming increasingly precarious. Mr. Lao from Jing’an District in Shanghai said, “I work in a business center on Jianghua Road, it was almost full last year, but two-thirds have left this year, parking spaces are empty. Most of the unemployed are from the 1980s generation; it’s really terrifying.” Mr. Qian, a friend of Lao, revealed that he used to work at the Zhangjiang Science City in Pudong New Area, but is now unemployed. He helplessly stated, “Many once bustling office buildings in Shanghai are now empty. Comparing with statistical data, the words of these ordinary people belonging to Shanghai’s middle class paint a dire picture of Shanghai’s economy.
Comparatively, the situation in Shandong is even worse, especially in the medical field which can be described as a wail of despair. A nurse in Shandong said on Douyin, “I want to ask how long it has been since you were paid, is your salary still being paid regularly? For us, starting from May, we didn’t receive a month’s pay, then from June to October, we received half a month’s pay, only just over a thousand yuan a month.”
She continued, stating that recently, the salary of just over a thousand yuan has dropped to between five hundred and eight hundred yuan: “My colleagues receive even less than me, some only get over three hundred. Now, I heard that salaries for November and December are not going to be paid, how can people survive? Not to mention supporting children, we can’t even support ourselves.”
According to the latest statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics of the Chinese Communist Party in mid-December 2025, the urban unemployment rate in November was 5.1%, remaining stable from October, and the official rhetoric indicates that the overall employment situation is “stable.” However, looking at the age breakdown, the youth unemployment rate of 16 to 24-year-olds, excluding students has remained persistently high in most months, with public statistics showing approximately 18.9% in August, 17.3% in October, and 16.9% in November.
After the data was released, Reuters in related reports quoted economists and employment research institutions saying that official unemployment statistics do not cover young people who have stopped seeking jobs, are not registered for employment, or are not included in the survey system. Therefore, the official unemployment rate figures may not fully reflect the employment pressure faced by young people.
A youth returning to their hometown in Hubei said in a short video, “Can’t make it in the city, but there’s no place in the village either.” A netizen responded, “I’ve returned to my hometown for the third time this year, now I don’t know if I’m still considered part of society.” A netizen claiming to be a resigned “female white-collar worker” from Shenzhen said, “I cried for 20 minutes on the subway. I bought a house with a loan in 2019, now it’s cut in half. I dare not tell my parents.”
Xu Shen, a scholar from Renmin University of China, analyzed in a public comment that this year’s demographic crisis is also evident in young people being “unwilling to work and not aspiring for progress.” He believes this is not a personal choice but a result of structural changes in the system over many years. He said, “China is seeing the emergence of a new invisible population group. They don’t work, don’t seek employment, don’t start businesses, don’t consume, and are not accounted for in statistics. They vanished, and the country has no idea where they went.” He added, “The real social rupture isn’t about people being angry, it’s about quietly withdrawing.”
At the same time, the private lives of Chinese people are undergoing subtle changes, with personal privacy being slowly eroded. Starting from mid-September this year, grassroots governments in many regions have been strengthening regulations for rental housing, requiring tenants to register with their real names while synchronizing with public security or community systems. A tenant in Guangdong wrote on a local forum, “We even need to register to rent a house, we have to report our existence.” An anonymous netizen who appears to work in online censorship said, “We receive new updated word lists every day, we only know what not to say, but not why.” The three most common phrases on social networks have also changed, no longer debates, but are now “can’t help it,” “forget it,” “stop talking.”
As 2025 comes to a close, new phenomena of data distortion within the Chinese economic operation have emerged, which has been described as a “falsification chain.” A report by First Financial on December 29, 2025 exposed that some provinces and cities inflated export growth data through the method of “paying for exports.”
Zhu Tao, a foreign trade professional in Beijing, told journalists, “The practice of ‘paying for exports’ has existed for many years, it’s just under higher scrutiny on export data from superiors, various parts have reached an unspoken agreement. As long as the numbers look good, the higher-ups are satisfied.”
According to statistics released by the Chinese Customs Administration, the national export growth in 2025 was about 1.7% year-on-year, however, the export data released by some prefecture-level cities showed growth of 20% to 30%, significantly deviating from the overall economic situation. An economic commentator pointed out, “Export figures are treated as a political mission rather than a reflection of reality.”
In response to this, a scholar studying economic issues in Shandong, Mr. Peng, told journalists that such data distortion conceals the true state of foreign trade and economic operation. He said, “The GDP figures announced each year may not reflect the actual situation, but senior officials, driven by political achievements, turn a blind eye. Judging the state of China’s economy can be done simply by looking at the income of ordinary people.”
He further questioned official export figures, “I personally don’t believe the so-called record high in exports. We can’t see real enterprise orders, yet we see the numbers looking more and more attractive, this in itself is a problem.” Mr. Peng added, “The most dangerous part is, data can be beautified, but people’s livelihoods cannot be fabricated.”
Beneath the official “bright” data, grassroots finance in China is also gradually becoming unstable. An anonymous employee at a rural credit cooperative in Anhui posted online, “Recently I’ve been filling out forms again, all about whether we can still pay, and how long we can hold on. Almost everyone in our town is withdrawing money from the bank to bring home a little. This is China’s silent panic.”
The cooling of consumer spending reflects the real scene of 2025. According to business statistics referenced by the China UnionPay Big Data Center, offline consumer spending has been lower than the previous year for seven consecutive months nationwide. Meanwhile, industry monitoring data shows that the ratio of restaurant closures to registered cancellations has reached about 3.4 to 1. The owner of a clothing store in Tianzifang, Shanghai, lamented online, “I used to sell twenty thousand in a day on weekends, now it’s not even two thousand.” A café owner in Hangzhou left a message, “Opening a store now is like gambling with my life.”
Retail is not the only shrinking industry; marriage registration data in China has become an indicator of social temperature. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, there were approximately 3.98 million marriage registrations in the first three quarters of 2025, the lowest for the same period since 2008. A netizen wrote, “Not getting married, not having children, not taking out loans, these are the only ways we can fight back.” This choice represents another form of silent resistance.
The emotions of Chinese people are beginning to appear in sporadic, non-organized ways on the streets and on social media. According to public media reports and online information collation since the first half of 2025, various malignant incidents have occurred in many regions of China, including armed attacks, retaliatory assaults, and intentional vehicular pedestrian collisions. Although these incidents are individual actions, they show a trend that some netizens refer to as “emotional violence.”
According to data statistics released by China Dissent Monitor, a subsidiary of the Freedom House, about 1,392 protests or group actions were recorded in just the third quarter of 2025, an increase of about 45% compared to the same period in 2024, involving different social strata such as workers, property owners, villagers, etc. (The above information is based on public data statistics, and there has been no official response to this data.)
An anonymous social psychology researcher told reporters, “Many previous violent incidents had conflicts of interest or family disputes behind them, but some of the events this year show a stronger sense of social retaliation. Without organization, demands, or slogans, it’s just spontaneous action after reaching a breaking point.” He said, “This kind of emotion that cannot be anticipated, dialogued with, or appeased, is the most difficult for any governance system to handle.”
As we step out of 2025, no one can determine where the next stage will lead, but the increasing silence itself is becoming a signal of accumulation.