Old reliable: Chinese twentysomethings aren't losing sleep over AI taking their jobs. A recent New York Times investigation by San Francisco tech reporter Jasmine Sun, based on interviews with over 50 researchers, economists, and policy experts, concluded that Silicon Valley's AI insiders broadly agree that most people's economic prospects are grim — but no one knows what to do about it. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs could disappear by 2030, and Block CEO Jack Dorsey blamed AI agents for cutting nearly half his staff in March.
Sun followed up with an extended piece documenting a strikingly different attitude she observed while traveling in China. When she relayed American graduates' anxiety about AI-driven unemployment to her 24-year-old cousin, he scoffed: In China, people can't find jobs because there are too many people, not because of AI. Hu Anyan, author of "Delivering Packages in Beijing," said his blue-collar coworkers are too busy making a living to worry about being replaced by machines.
This contrast has concrete causes. Since 1999, China's higher education expansion has churned out a massive oversupply of knowledge workers, and youth unemployment was severe long before the AI boom. Labor is also cheap: a Zhihu user noted that replacing a position paying 3,000 yuan (about $420) per month isn't worth the cost of AI, while jobs paying over $100,000 annually in the US are the real target. Instead of fear, the prevailing attitude is a rush to learn. A WeChat analysis neatly summarized the domestic conversation as two types: one urging you to learn AI fast, and the other urging you to get on the bandwagon.
Policy differences are also stark. AI policy researcher Matt Sheehan flagged a Beijing labor arbitration case that ruled firing an employee just because AI could do their job violates China's Labor Contract Law. Sun also noticed that Chinese parks and subway stations are staffed with far more cleaners and security guards than needed — effectively turning public-sector jobs into a buffer against unemployment.