During the dotcom era, U.S. real estate enjoyed a mini-boom in incubator rentals. Remember them? Angel investors would rent an office suite and populate it with their various start-ups. There were some common areas and the entrepreneurs might interact, to their mutual benefit. Interaction was a benefit, not a feature.
More recently, we saw the rise and dramatic fall of WeWork, a startup “office sharing” company that injected a lot of “social” into their model, with pizza parties and other camaraderie-inducing gimmicks for young people renting small spaces or even just desks.
WeWork came after the established (and ongoing) success of firms like Regus, which offer temporary office space without that social dimension. Bring your own fun, as it were.
One wonders whether the trend toward working from home is reducing the use of small and temporary office rentals.
Paying to pretend
Well, not in Red China it isn’t. The social pressures there are creating an odd twist on the incubator-Regus-WeWork model. Young people are paying to sit around in the offices of fake companies. There, they pad their resumes, apply for real jobs, play computer games, write emails, or take day-long coffee breaks.
Some landlords require renters to arrive promptly at a set time in the morning and stay until closing time. The landlord provides computers, break rooms, meeting spaces, snacks, and, in some places, lunch. The landlord is a boss who can kick out any “workers.” No office romances allowed.
Everyone’s favorite Soviet joke comes to mind: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Except here, “we” actually pay “them” and then “we pretend to work.” The companies are actually called pretend to work or pretend work companies. “Pretend work companies that help unemployed people fake having a job for a small price are springing up across China. The trend is particularly prevalent in first- and second-tier cities where people rent office space and transform it into ‘pretend work companies.’ ”
Lies, truth
The price charged per day is small but can add up to around $2,000 a year. The average annual salary in a real job runs to about $16,000 a year.
The owner of Dongguan’s Pretend To Work, known as Feiyu, says 40% of his clients are fresh graduates fabricating internships for their universities, while the rest are freelancers many in digital industries looking for community. He insists it’s more than a business; it’s a social experiment. “This is about using lies to maintain respect, but also helping some people find the truth,” he explains.
Internships?
China’s young professionals have faced years of difficulty entering the workforce, a crisis worsened by the pandemic. At one point in 2023, unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds was estimated at 46.5%, according to Peking University professor Zhang Dandan. The situation became so dire that the government even stopped publishing youth unemployment data.
The Chinese government has introduced measures to address the crisis. Since 2011, it has threatened to scrap university majors if fewer than 60% of graduates find jobs for two consecutive years. Reports also suggest some universities have pressured graduates to falsify their employment status to keep programmes alive.
Truly, “This is about using lies to maintain respect.” But Mr. Feiyu may himself be fudging the truth by painting a picture of 100% utility (40% internship simulation and 60% freelancing).
Mr Zhou came across the Pretend To Work Company while browsing social media site Xiaohongshu [RedNote]. 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.
As one YouTuber put it, “People do this because they want to save face and don’t want their parents to know they’re unemployed. [It’s] not a coworking space, not an office, but literally a fake office,” and some of the fake offices even offer fake internship certificates.
Young people apparently won’t have long to wait for real, high-paying jobs. Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics reported annual GDP growth of 5.3% in 2025.
Also, “a 6.4 percent increase in industrial output and solid contributions from the services sector, which expanded 5.5 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, retail sales grew by 5.0 percent, and fixed asset investment rose 2.8 percent over the same period, with a particular boost from manufacturing-related spending. Per capita disposable income also saw real gains, rising 5.4 percent after accounting for inflation.”
More likely, though, this is another example of “using lies to maintain respect.” □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
