China's Pretend Offices, Young Adults Pay to Simulate Work Amid Job Crisis

 China's Pretend Offices, Young Adults Pay to Simulate Work Amid Job Crisis

With youth unemployment exceeding 14% and the economy sluggish, many young people are turning to pretend offices coworking-style spaces where, for a daily fee, they can simulate a professional environment. These spaces, complete with desks, Wi-Fi, meeting rooms, and even tea rooms, are gaining popularity in cities like Dongguan, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan.

One such user is 30-year-old Shui Zhou. After his food business failed in 2024, he began paying 30 yuan (about $4.20) per day to sit in a mock office in Dongguan, operated by a business aptly named Pretend To Work Company. Now, Zhou shares the space with five others, and treats his day like a typical office routine arriving by 9am and sometimes staying until 11pm.

I feel very happy, says Zhou. It’s like we’re working together as a group. For him, the structure and camaraderie have improved his self-discipline and mental health. He now uses his time there to build AI skills in hopes of landing a real job. This unusual trend reflects the frustration and disillusionment many young Chinese feel as they face a difficult job market. According to Dr. Biao Xiang of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, this “pretending to work” is a coping mechanism that creates emotional distance from societal expectations, while still providing a sense of purpose.

For others, the pretend offices serve more practical or deceptive purposes. Xiaowen Tang, a 23-year-old Shanghai graduate, rented a desk for a month and sent staged photos to her university to fulfill an unwritten requirement for proof of employment or internship. In reality, she spent her days writing online novels to earn extra cash. “If you’re going to fake it, just fake it to the end,” she says bluntly.

The spaces typically cost 30–50 yuan per day and sometimes include lunch, snacks, and beverages. While some use them as places to job hunt or start businesses, others are simply trying to ease parental pressure or meet academic requirements. Dr. Christian Yao of Victoria University in New Zealand views these setups as transitional tools. “Due to economic transformation and the mismatch between education and the job market, young people need these places to think about their next steps,” he says.

The founder of the Dongguan-based Pretend To Work Company, who goes by the pseudonym Feiyu, launched the business after experiencing his own struggles with unemployment. “What I’m selling isn’t a workstation, but the dignity of not being a useless person,” he explains. Within a month of launching, his office was fully booked.

According to Feiyu, 40% of his customers are recent graduates seeking proof of internships. The remaining 60% are freelancers or digital nomads  including ecommerce workers and online writers  looking for a structured place to work. The average age of attendees is around 30. While Feiyu admits the long-term profitability of such businesses is uncertain, he considers his venture a social experiment. “It uses lies to maintain respectability,” he says. “But if we help users transform their fake workplace into a real starting point, then the experiment has value.”

For people like Shui Zhou, that transformation may already be underway. With renewed focus and a growing skill set, he's optimistic that his time in a pretend office may eventually lead to a real job.