As a result, real estate prices have fallen sharply and relentlessly, leaving elderly people like my friend’s parents unable to sell their apartments to pay for their care and care. And they are not the only ones affected by the recession. Doctors are under pressure and many patients don’t have the funds for surgery. Businessmen, on the other hand, are unwilling to invest in an unpredictable environment and are sitting on their hands. Facing a tough job market, many university graduates are effectively dropping out, or “lying down” as they call it in China. Even schoolchildren do not seem to be immune to general discouragement. As one teacher I spoke with said, when society is sick, children pay the price. Too many parents know a child who had to drop out of school because of depression.
Of course, for all this, the West is being scapegoated, as is Japan, China’s other favorite enemy – who, people say, opposed the rise of China – in the 1930s. The brutal invasion and subsequent occupation of China continues to stir anxiety. (One sequence of his CGI video I showed in my recent Shanghai spin class featured giant coronaviruses studded with Japanese temples.)
Regardless of who is to blame, immigration is on the rise. More than 310,000 Chinese people have left the country in each of the past two years, a 62% increase from an annual average of about 191,000 in the decade ending in 2019, according to United Nations figures. People in Shanghai who have the means to do so are talking endlessly. About “running away” even against officially condemned countries like the United States.
This isn’t necessarily the answer. One of my friends returned to China to stay after six years of graduate school in Boston because he missed the warm home life in China. And no one has any illusions about the difficulty of getting established in another country. Chinese people talk about a whole new class of immigrants. These are women who left behind successful careers to accompany their children to the United States as early as they can assimilate, ideally while still in middle school or high school. As for the fruits of their sacrifices, it is too early to say. Can children really become Westerners? Will they – like me decades ago – become foreigners?
The situation in China may change. Those who are “lying down” are not sleeping. They are watching and may one day rise up. But in the meantime, the people of Shanghai are, in their words, simply “Xin Lei.””: Their hearts are tired.
