How the Chinese economic downturn is affecting all kinds of people. How real estate meltdown, with enough unfinished empty apartments to fill the population of Germany, is at the center of it all. How tech entrepreneurs are mysteriously disappearing, and how college graduates don’t want to work.

Guests: Keyu Jin, London School of Economics, author of New China Playbook; Elsie Chen, a member of China’s “lying down” generation, now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

Elsie Chen’s New York Times article about lying flat. She interviews Luo Huazhong, the factory worker, who quit his job, went back to his rural village. His post about his lifestyle decision went viral, and inspired a movement dedicated to opting out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers-tangping.html

A roundtable discussion with Keyu Jin at the Fairbank Center at Harvard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357QIFs9FXc

Sound design, original score, mixing and mastering by Rowhome Productions.

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Playfulness Episode 23