China’s lonely-heart crisis fuels a growing ‘companionship economy’
As Chinese society becomes more atomised, consumers devoid of human interaction are increasingly opening their wallets to stave off loneliness
In China, young people are increasingly using social media to not only connect with friends, but to pay strangers to talk with them.
As society becomes more atomised, users on the social platform Xiaohongshu have begun using the hashtag “companion chat” to find others willing to buy or sell a few minutes of human conversation.
“Is anyone available to chat? I’ll pay whatever it takes,” read one recent post tagged with the hashtag. Within hours, the user had received dozens of replies from people offering their services.
As the country’s single population skyrockets, more are turning to various forms of paid companionship – from chatting with strangers online to virtual role-playing games.
This burgeoning companionship economy is a “response to China’s changing demographics”, said Wang Pan, an associate professor in Chinese and Asian studies at the University of New South Wales, and the author of Love and Marriage in Globalizing China.
According to China’s most recent census, the number of unmarried people between the ages of 20 and 49 in the country reached 134 million in 2020 – more than the entire population of Japan.
China’s marriage registrations have fallen by nearly half over the past decade, with only 4.75 million couples tying the knot during the first three quarters of this year, a historic low, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.