Causes of Perceived Failure in China | Generated by AI
Prompt
Why do people fail in their lives in China?
Answer
“Failure” in China is often defined narrowly as not achieving high socioeconomic status (stable job, house, marriage, financial security for family) rather than personal fulfillment. The most common reasons people end up in long-term hardship or feel they have “failed” are structural and cultural, not just individual shortcomings. Here are the main factors (backed by data and widely discussed in Chinese society):
- The gaokao (college entrance exam) bottleneck
- One exam at age 18 largely determines your university tier, which strongly predicts lifetime income and social class.
- In 2024, ~13.4 million took gaokao; only ~4–5 million got into Tier-1 (“985/211”) universities that feed into good jobs.
- Failing to enter a decent university → limited access to urban hukou, white-collar jobs, and the marriage market → lifelong disadvantage. Many describe this as “one exam decides your fate” (一分定终身).
- Hukou (household registration) system
- Rural hukou holders (still ~40% of population) have severely restricted access to urban public services, good schools for kids, and social welfare even if they work in cities for decades.
- Without local urban hukou, buying a house, getting your child into good public schools, or qualifying for many jobs is almost impossible → intergenerational poverty trap.
- Real-estate and marriage market pressure
- In most cities, a man is considered “not marriageable” without owning an apartment (often 100–200 m², costing 30–100× annual salary).
- Parents frequently go into massive debt or bankrupt themselves for the son’s “wedding house.” Those who cannot afford it often stay single (bare branches / 光棍), which is seen as personal failure in Chinese culture.
- 996 work culture + layoffs in tech/private sector
- Many middle-class professionals who survived gaokao and got good jobs face sudden layoffs (especially 2021–2025 tech crackdown and property crisis).
- At 35+ you are considered “old” and unemployable in many industries (“35-year-old curse” 35岁危机). Thousands of ex-BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) engineers now drive ride-hailing or deliver food.
- Extreme competition and winner-take-all economy
- Top 1–2% capture most wealth and opportunities (Beijing/Shanghai/Top universities → civil service or state-owned enterprise “iron rice bowl” or finance/tech).
- Everyone else fights for shrinking middle-class spots. The middle class itself has been contracting since ~2018.
- Family expectations and “lying flat” backlash
- Strong filial piety: many feel they failed if they cannot financially support parents or give them grandchildren in a decent city.
- When the effort/reward ratio becomes unbearable, millions choose tangping (lying flat) or runxue (escape-ology, emigrating), which society labels as “personal failure” even though it is a rational response.
- Demographic and economic timing
- Being born in the wrong cohort matters:
- Post-1990s born into one-child policy + skyrocketing housing → hardest-hit generation.
- Post-2000s now face youth unemployment rates that peaked above 21% in 2023 and still hover around 15–18% in 2025.
- Being born in the wrong cohort matters:
In short, in China “failure” is less about laziness or bad choices and more about failing to win in a series of high-stakes, zero-sum tournaments (gaokao → job market → housing/marriage → keeping the job past 35) under institutional constraints that most developed countries do not have at this severity.
References
- China’s Youth Unemployment Crisis (Caixin Global)
- The Hukou System and Intergenerational Poverty (Stanford FSI)
- 35-Year-Old Curse in Chinese Tech (Sixth Tone)
- Gaokao statistics 2024 (Ministry of Education PRC)