Dropouts: "Quitting naked": Young Chinese escape job pressure
China's promise of upward mobility is crumbling. The willingness to work hard is dwindling, especially among the young generation. The Handelsblatt visited young people who are opting out. Their motives are surprising.
In the southern Chinese city of Dali, 31-year-old Huihui has decided to "nackt kündigen", a term that literally translates to "strip job" and refers to resigning without immediately finding a new job. Huihui, who was once a well-paid mathematics teacher at a private school in the central Chinese city of Chongqing, quit her job in July 2025 due to the high pressure and long working hours.
Often working from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., sometimes even on Saturdays, Huihui and other young Chinese professionals are leaving their jobs in search of a change.
Huihui prefers to teach without a new job immediately, a choice that has been popularized on Chinese social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, also known as Rednote. The hashtag #luoci has been used over 3.6 billion times on the platform. Now, Huihui and five like-minded individuals live in a courtyard house in a small village near Dali, a city of 800,000 people in China.
The pleasant highland climate attracts tourists, with over 100 million visitors per year, and many more young Chinese professionals are also following in her footsteps.
The reasons for this trend are varied, but the Handelsblatt interviewed more than a dozen of the young "aussteiger" (out movers) to better understand the factors driving them to leave their jobs and settle in provincial areas in China.
Written by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
