Business

China’s unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs

Published

12 hours ago

August 11, 2025

Sylvia Chang

BBC News Chinese, Hong Kong

BBC Shui Zhou, a young adult who pretends to have an office job, makes the victory sign with both hands that he is holding up in the air — Shui Zhou pays to go into an office every day

No-one would want to work without getting a salary, or even worse – having to pay to be there.

Yet paying companies so you can pretend to work for them has become popular among young, unemployed adults in China. It has led to a growing number of such providers.

The development comes amid China’s sluggish economy and jobs market. Chinese youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, at more than 14%.

With real jobs increasingly hard to come by, some young adults would rather pay to go into an office than be just stuck at home.

Shui Zhou, 30, had a food business venture that failed in 2024. In April of this year, he started to pay 30 yuan ($4.20; £3.10) per day to go into a mock-up office run by a business called Pretend To Work Company, in the city of Dongguan, 114 km (71 miles) north of Hong Kong.

There he joins five “colleagues” who are doing the same thing.

“I feel very happy,” says Mr Zhou. “It’s like we’re working together as a group.”

Such operations are now appearing in major cities across China, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Kunming. More often they look like fully-functional offices, and are equipped with computers, internet access, meeting rooms, and tea rooms.

And rather than attendees just sitting around, they can use the computers to search for jobs, or to try to launch their own start-up businesses. Sometimes the daily fee, usually between 30 and 50 yuan, includes lunch, snacks and drinks.

Attendees at Pretend To Work Company, in the city of Dongguan — Attendees can either just sit around, or use the provided computers to apply for jobs

Dr Christian Yao, a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Management in New Zealand, is an expert on the Chinese economy.

“The phenomenon of pretending to work is now very common,” he says. “Due to economic transformation and the mismatch between education and the job market, young people need these places to think about their next steps, or to do odd jobs as a transition.

“Pretend office companies are one of the transitional solutions.”

Mr Zhou came across the Pretend To Work Company while browsing social media site Xiaohongshu. He says he felt that the office environment would improve his self-discipline. He has now been there for more than three months.

Mr Zhou sent photos of the office to his parents, and he says they feel much more at ease about his lack of employment.

While attendees can arrive and leave whenever they want, Mr Zhou usually gets to the office between 8am and 9am. Sometimes he doesn’t leave until 11pm, only departing after the manager of the business has left.

He adds that the other people there are now like friends. He says that when someone is busy, such as job hunting, they work hard, but when they have free time they chat, joke about, and play games. And they often have dinner together after work.

Mr Zhou says that he likes this team building, and that he is much happier than before he joined.

In Shanghai, Xiaowen Tang rented a workstation at a pretend work company in Shanghai for a month earlier this year. The 23-year-old graduated from university last year and hasn’t found a full-time job yet.

Her university has an unwritten rule that students must sign an employment contract or provide proof of internship within one year of graduation; otherwise, they won’t receive a diploma.

She sent the office scene to the school as proof of her internship. In reality, she paid the daily fee, and sat in the office writing online novels to earn some pocket money.

“If you’re going to fake it, just fake it to the end,” says Ms Tang.

Dr Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, says that China’s pretending to work trend comes from a “sense of frustration and powerlessness” regarding a lack of job opportunities.

“Pretending to work is a shell that young people find for themselves, creating a slight distance from mainstream society and giving themselves a little space.”

The owner of the Pretend To Work Company in the city of Dongguan is 30-year-old Feiyu (a pseudonym). “What I’m selling isn’t a workstation, but the dignity of not being a useless person,” he says.

He himself has been unemployed in the past, after a previous retail business that he owned had to close during the Covid pandemic. “I was very depressed and a bit self-destructive,” he recalls. “You wanted to turn the tide, but you were powerless.”

In April of this year he started to advertise Pretend To Work, and within a month all the workstations were full. Would-be new joiners have to apply.

Feiyu say that 40% of customers are recent university graduates who come to take photos to prove their internship experience to their former tutors. While a small number of them come to help deal with pressure from their parents.

The other 60% are freelancers, many of whom are digital nomads, including those working for big ecommerce firms, and cyberspace writers. The average age is around 30, with the youngest being 25.

The owner of the Pretend To Work Company, 30-year-old Feiyu, looking at a computer screen — Feiyu, the owner of Pretend to Work Company says he is selling people “dignity”

Officially, these workers are referred to as “flexible employment professionals”, a grouping that also includes ride-hailing and trucker drivers.

Over the longer term Feiyu says it is questionable whether the business will remain profitable. Instead he likes to view it more as a social experiment.

“It uses lies to maintain respectability, but it allows some people to find the truth,” he says. “If we only help users prolong their acting skills we are complicit in a gentle deception.

“Only by helping them transform their fake workplace into a real starting point can this social experiment truly live up to its promise.”

Mr Zhou is now spending most of his time improving his AI skills. He says he’s noticed that some companies are specifying proficiency in AI tools when recruiting. So he thinks gaining such AI skills “will make it easier” for him to find a full-time job.

Business

Chennai’s BCS Launches Agentic isAI, a No-Code, Self-Orchestrating AI Built for Business Automation

Published

1 hour ago

August 11, 2025

CXOtoday News Desk

Agentic isAI is a no-code, autonomous AI platform that learns from behavior and automates enterprise operations without human prompts
Business Core Solutions is a Chennai-based tech company delivering enterprise-grade automation platforms trusted by global industry leaders

The Chennai-based technology company Business Core Solutions (BCS) has launched Agentic isAI, a path-breaking, autonomous AI platform that reimagines enterprise automation. This first-of-its-kind solution empowers businesses to proactively manage operations, reduce downtime, and automate critical workflows, all without the need for prompts, coding, or training data.

Chennai’s BCS Launches Agentic isAI, a No-Code, Self-Orchestrating AI Built for Business Automation

True to its name, which is inspired by the Tamil word “Isai” – meaning music, Agentic isAI has the ability to bring harmony and intelligence to complex enterprise systems. Unlike traditional AI systems that require extensive training data or manual prompts, Agentic isAI operates with true autonomy – it can observe system behaviour, detect anomalies, and initiate responses without human intervention. The solution is designed as a no-code platform – it learns from real-time patterns instead of relying on pre-trained models, making it faster to deploy and easier to adapt across industries.

Built for enterprise environments, it seamlessly integrates with platforms like SAP, Azure, Salesforce, Oracle, and more. Already in production with leading global clients, it is helping reduce downtime, prevent job failures, optimise cloud usage, and automate critical business operations at scale.

BCS is a Chennai-based enterprise technology company specialising in intelligent automation platforms for global businesses. Its flagship solutions, including Symphony for process orchestration, Anugal for identity governance, and DQView for data quality management, are trusted by Fortune 100 companies and industry leaders across the US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. With the launch of Agentic isAI, BCS continues to push the boundaries of scalable, AI-driven enterprise automation.

In his comments, Mr. Prakash Palani, Founder, Business Core Solutions, said, “We’re proud and excited to launch Agentic isAI, a product that reflects years of deep enterprise insight and cutting-edge innovation. What makes Agentic isAI truly path-breaking is its ability to act autonomously, without prompts, training data, or code, and still deliver reliable, enterprise-grade automation. We believe this platform has the power to fundamentally transform how businesses operate, making them more responsive, efficient, and resilient in a fast-changing world.”

He added: “Innovations like this are often expected to emerge from Silicon Valley or other global tech hubs. But Agentic isAI was imagined, engineered, and brought to life right here in Tamil Nadu. It proves that world-class enterprise technology can be built anywhere, as long as there is intent, talent, and vision. This launch isn’t just a milestone for us. It’s a moment of pride for the entire region.”

Beyond Agentic isAI, BCS offers a suite of powerful enterprise platforms designed to address core operational challenges. Symphony is an AI-powered orchestration platform that streamlines IT and business processes, enabling seamless automation across complex systems. Anugal focuses on identity and access governance, helping organizations ensure compliance, manage risk, and enforce security with precision. Meanwhile, DQView is a modern data quality platform that brings visibility, validation, and trust to enterprise data landscapes. These solutions reflect BCS’s commitment to building deeply integrated, scalable technologies that drive measurable impact for global businesses.

At the heart of BCS is a belief that technology and social responsibility can grow together. The company has consistently invested in inclusive hiring, with over half its workforce comprising individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, including first-generation graduates, rural youth, women returning to work, and persons with hearing and speech impairments. Through initiatives like the BCS Academy, which trains and places students, and HERizon, which supports women re-entering the workforce, BCS has created not just jobs, but opportunities for transformation. Its social initiatives also extend to improving public education, installing clean water systems, and nurturing local talent, making it a company where business success and human impact go hand in hand.

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Business

EasyJet captain suspended after getting ‘drunk and naked’ in hotel

Published

1 hour ago

August 11, 2025

Aleks Phillips

EasyJet has suspended one of its captains after he was reportedly seen roaming a luxury hotel drunk and naked.

The unnamed pilot was witnessed walking through common areas of a five-star resort in Cape Verde without any clothes on in the early hours of the morning on 5 August, after an extended drinking session in a bar, according to the Sun.

He was due to operate a return flight to Gatwick more than 36 hours later, but was grounded after the budget airline received complaints about the incident and a replacement pilot found.

An EasyJet spokesman told the BBC the pilot now faces an investigation and that the safety of passengers and crew was its “highest priority”.

The captain arrived at the Melia Dunas Beach Resort and Spa in the West African island nation on 4 August and proceeded to begin drinking, the Sun reports.

At around 02:30 local time (04:30 BST) the following morning, hotel guests reportedly saw him strip off and wander into the reception, before moving on to the gym and spa, according to the newspaper.

“The pilot did not have a stitch on and reeked of alcohol,” an anonymous source inside the airline was quoted by the paper as saying.

“Anyone who saw the pilot cavorting naked in the early hours on the day before a flight would not dream of getting on a plane with him at the controls.”

He was scheduled to helm the 2,332-nautical-mile (4,318km) trip back to Gatwick on the afternoon of 6 August, but was removed from the flight.

An EasyJet spokesman said: “As soon as we were made aware, the pilot was immediately stood down from duty, in line with our procedures, pending an investigation.

“The safety of our passengers and crew is EasyJet’s highest priority.”

The airline’s code of business ethics states that staff must behave “with integrity when dealing with our people, our customers, our partners and the communities within which we operate”.

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Business

KT reports record operating profit on robust AI business in Q2

Published

3 hours ago

August 11, 2025

KED Global

South Korea’s major mobile carrier KT Corp., which has picked artificial intelligence as its next growth engine, posted a record-high quarterly operating profit exceeding 1 trillion won ($719 million) in the second quarter, thanks to a double-digit growth in its AI business.

The company announced in a regulatory filing on Monday that its consolidated operating income came to 1.01 trillion won for the April-June period, more than doubling from the same period last year and breaching the 1 trillion won mark for the first time since its inception.

Revenue climbed 13.5% to 7.43 trillion won, while net profit surged 78.6% to 733.3 billion won.

Profit was partly driven by a one-off gain of 390 billion won from selling the company’s real estate assets.

But KT also attributed brisk sales in the business-to-business unit, especially AI services, to the stellar result.

Sales from its AI and information technology business jumped 13.8% on-year to 317.6 billion won in the quarter, whereas its mainstay wireless service added 1.6% to 1.7 trillion won. Broadband revenue also inched up 2.1%.

(Graphics by Daeun Lee)

KT expects momentum to continue in the second half with the launch of new business-to-business products, including a large language model (LLM) and advanced cloud-computing services.

It also projects stronger subscriber growth in mobile after some SK Telecom Co. users switched carriers to KT following an April data breach that affected all of SK’s 25 million customers.

ACCELERATED TRANSITION INTO AICT COMPANY

The upbeat result in the AI business is expected to accelerate KT’s push to transform into a so-called AICT company, a plan unveiled by KT Chief Executive Kim Young-shub at this year’s MWC Barcelona in March.

AICT service is aimed at bolstering traditional telecommunications services with IT and AI technologies.

KT is Korea’s only company that has formed AI partnerships with both Microsoft Corp. and Palantir Technologies Inc.

It also signed a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bolster customized mobile and generative AI services for corporate customers in February last year.

It plans to introduce its LLM under development with Microsoft soon, as well as encrypted cloud services using confidential-computing technology, which processes encrypted data only after verifying a trusted execution environment.

KT CEO Kim Young-shub (left) and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shake hands after signing a strategic partnership at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington on June 3, 2024 (Courtesy of KT)

“In the second half, we will release our encrypted cloud developed with Microsoft and unveil a full AI lineup, including K-ChatGPT, a LLM model,” said Jang Min, KT’s chief financial officer. “The move will help KT cement its position as Korea’s leading AI company.”

COLLABORATION WITH US BIG TECH COMPANIES

KT’s collaboration with Palantir in AI is also expected to gain further traction.

In March, it became the first Korean company to forge an exclusive strategic partnership with the US tech company.

KT will incorporate Palantir’s AI and big data platforms with its own cloud and network infrastructure to help AI transformation, or AX, in both public and private businesses.

“We are now the most trusted AX partner in the financial industry,” said a KT official.

The utilization rate at a data center operated by KT Cloud, KT’s cloud service offering subsidiary, has already surpassed 90%, underscoring demand.

After failing to join the state-led sovereign AI initiative, KT will focus more on the private sector through its collaboration with big tech companies, the company said.

Last week, the Korean government selected five local technology firms, including LG, Naver and SK Telecom, to spearhead the country’s flagship sovereign AI initiative, as Seoul moves to build large-scale AI models independent of US tech giants such as OpenAI, the operator of ChatGPT.

KT joined the race but dropped out of the bid in the second round of evaluation.

Write to Ji-Hee Choi at mymasaki@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.

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