James Kynge

It's not a full pretense.

I think quite a lot of people go to these places because everybody else there knows that they haven't got a job and they'd like to have a job.

And so they're almost like advertising their joblessness.

And, you know, obviously some people are there pretending to work.

But yeah, I mean, what struck me about this trend is that it's quite widespread.

You find these pretend to work offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, places like Taiyuan, Dongguan, all kinds of cities across China.

I'm not going to say it's a massive number of people, but I must say it does remind me very much of

the time I spent in Japan in the early 90s, when you would find quite a lot of salarymen who'd lost their jobs getting up every morning, putting on their suit and tie, and going to a local library to basically sit there all day because they'd been laid off, but because they felt so ashamed that they couldn't admit it to the rest of their family.

So I think there's a little bit of that sense here.

I didn't get the same sense of shame in this particular dynamic.

But one thing struck me, one journalist who went there was going around and

There is some humor in these places, too.

For instance, in one of the offices in Beijing, there was a door marked Chairman's Office.

But when you opened it, you opened it and only found the fire escape going outside.

So I suppose it was a bit of a play on that the chairman doesn't exist.

Obviously, I think the reason why we chose this topic is because it shows an angle on one of China's biggest problems, social and economic, and that is the way in which young people, 16 to 24-year-olds, are finding it really hard to get jobs.

The latest number is among this cohort, 16.9% were unemployed, unable to find a job in March.

And if you ask me, based on the conversations I was having in China, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that number really starts to rise now.

You must have had very similar conversations during your trip, Alice.

Well, I couldn't resist going back to the dim sum bonds.