Mr Chu’s story is in some senses extraordinary. But in others it is very ordinary. He is one of 200 million-odd people in China whom the state considers to be “flexible workers”, a broad category that includes all those who fall outside standard forms of employment.
The group makes up what is called the “gig economy”. Its members do not have formal contracts, and yet they have become a crucial part of China’s labour supply, accounting for a quarter of the total workforce and two-fifths of it in cities.
Although some of the group have moved from formal jobs to informal ones as they have aged, many are young, unattached men with dim economic prospects. Their progress, or lack of it, will set the terms for China’s future.
If they are able to settle down, buy homes and start families, they will help ease the country’s economic malaise. If not, they will cause problems for the Communist Party. They are China’s “make-or-break” workers.
The stakes are particularly high owing to China’s economic difficulties. Consumer demand remains bleak, with retail sales growth slowing in August to its lowest rate in 2025. Property sales and prices continue to fall, dragging down sentiment. Urban unemployment has ticked up. Population decline has forced the country’s leaders to establish subsidies to encourage childbirth. The recent spate of gloomy official data has convinced some analysts that year-on-year gross domestic product growth could fall to as low as 3 per cent in the third quarter of 2025.
Unlike the West’s gig economy, which is almost entirely focused on services, roughly 40 million of the make-or-break workers are paid by the day or week to work in factories. In China’s largest manufacturing complexes they can at times make up 80 per cent of the workforce, according to a survey by Professor Zhang Dandan of Peking University.
Meanwhile, semi-official estimates suggest that 84 million people work for online firms, delivering food and parcels or driving ride-share taxis. Many more are thought to do freelance internet marketing or work odd jobs in construction and restaurants. Although factory workers tend to be in their 20s, delivery drivers can be older.
Gig workers’ lives are tough. So why do it rather than finding formal employment?
The workers who powered China’s economic boom in the 2000s often laboured in large factories that were akin to mini-cities, and which offered services ranging from room and board to weddings. Many would leave only when returning to their home towns. Contracts became common after 2008 and offered scant-but-improved benefits, such as injury insurance. The work was often tedious in the extreme, involving long hours on production lines and sometimes just one day off a month.
China’s make-or-break workers have consciously rejected such a life. They value freedom and flexibility above the stability prized by previous generations of workers, many of whom grew up in poverty. When factories require make-or-breakers to do menial jobs, they want to be able to leave.
Many we spoke to noted the importance of being able to make decisions on their own behalf. Ms Li Meng, a Shanghai resident in her 40s, worked in state schools for years before deciding to become a yoga teacher. She does not have a contract with her studio and it does not contribute to her pension. But the freedom to set her own schedule every week is worth it, she says.
These workers are also becoming adept at using China’s vast platform economy to their advantage. Short-term jobs in factories and in services including delivery, taxi driving and social-media marketing can all be sourced online. Workers can move from job to job seamlessly, often paying little attention to the company for which they work.
Mr Wang Shi, a driver in the south-western city of Lijiang, says he routinely switches between a number of ride-hailing apps in order to maximise his income. Professor Lu Ming of Shanghai Jiao Tong University says this mastery of internet platforms is helping many gig workers make more money than contracted ones. They can also take time off whenever they like.
Such freedoms are reflected in popular culture. An online trope has emerged from a recruiting centre in Shenzhen called Sanhe. The workers here, referred to as the “Gods of Sanhe”, are said to work only as long as it takes to pay for a few days’ room and board. After that, according to popular perception, they lounge about, playing on their phones and enjoying life. They are portrayed as shiftless masters of their own destiny, a portrayal that contrasts sharply with labourers of decades past, who were seen as hard workers attuned to the needs of their bosses.
However, as the gig economy grows, so do worries about its future. Since gig workers avoid formal employment and its contracts, they do not pay into their own pensions. This results in bigger pay cheques at the end of the day, and suits employers who are more than happy not to have to pay the extra costs.
Most flexible workers come from rural areas, meaning that they also lack an urban hukou, or residency permit, and therefore access to associated benefits such as urban pensions, as well as healthcare and schooling. In many cities they are unable to buy flats, too.
Other risks are more insidious, and will become evident only over time. Economists worry about the impact an enormous gig economy will have on China’s human capital. Companies have little incentive to train workers. Factories are increasingly automated, which makes them safer but even more monotonous. Workers usually specialise in “micro tasks” that require them to repeat a particular hand motion for hours on end, day after day. Mr Chu says that the worst of these are assembling phone covers or affixing labels to products. Prof Zhang fears many workers are “deskilling” when they do this kind of work.
What matters is not just what make-or-breakers can supply, but what they can eventually buy, too.
Earlier waves of workers from the countryside were largely ignored as consumers; many failed to benefit from China’s economic rise. Can gig workers buy homes and start families? If they manage to, says economist Zhang Ning from UBS, a bank, the shift would have a huge overall impact on consumption. Junhui Wang of the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu and co-authors find that when rural households become urban ones, they consume 2.4 per cent more.
In August, China’s Supreme Court ruled that workers can claim compensation from employers that have denied them benefits. This came as a shock to the myriad of small companies that use gig workers and can hardly afford the extra costs. But it is not clear how the ruling will be enforced. And the bigger question is what happens to the hukou, which China’s leaders have used for decades to control the movement of people. Although recent reforms make it easier for formal workers to settle in cities, they do nothing for gig workers.
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Their parklife
Unless changes are made to the hukou, many make-or-breakers face a darker future. The average age of factory gig workers is 26. About 80 per cent are male; 75-80 per cent are single and childless. In manufacturing hubs increasing numbers of young workers sleep in parks and under overpasses. Until recently, dozens could be seen snoozing in one of Kunshan’s biggest parks after they finished work, many with luggage in tow. (They have since been cleared by police.)
Large crowds gather in so-called labour markets, where intermediary agencies hire people for temporary construction or factory work. In Shenzhen’s biggest market, your correspondent was told by locals to take care, since many labourers were said to be alcoholics or drug addicts.
This is hardly conducive to the stability and calm the Communist Party aims to foster. Moreover, the new generation of workers is better connected than previous ones. They are armed with smartphones and spend hours a day scrolling social media.
Mr Dexter Roberts, author of The Myth Of Chinese Capitalism, says that young gig workers seem less deferential to the Communist Party than their predecessors. It is not a stretch to imagine a growing cohort of homeless, disgruntled and hopelessly bored workers causing ever greater disruptions to China’s peaceful urban veneer. The country’s leaders, then, have reason to help workers find their own homes to sleep in, rather than parks.© 2025 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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