Never Seen Shanghai So Bleak in 70 Years! Footage Shows Its Heart Deserted Even on Friday Night

This is a 3.5 million-gallon battery. I invested 3.5 million yuan to open this restaurant. It covers three floors and more than 5,400 square feet. It's 8.30 on Friday night, and look at the street. There's nobody here. This is Shanghai. Xianfeng Street used to be a very well-known food street. Across from us is Aegean, once one of Shanghai's busiest shopping centers. Now there's no food traffic at all. That makes things very very hard for those of us running restaurants. Look, the place next door has already closed. We serve north eastern Chinese food and iron pot stews. Take a look at our first floor. Among all the restaurants in Shanghai serving this food, we use the best materials for our interior. Renovating all three floors costs more than 2 million yuan. China's economy has been slowing for years, and the strain feels even stronger in Shanghai this year. One local business insider said, Let me tell you about the current situation in Shanghai. Let me tell you what Shanghai is like right now. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners are struggling. So are supermarket owners, hardware and building supply dealers, company owners, and factory owners. Even online sellers are struggling. So are those loan brokers everyone dislikes. There's no easy business anymore. Really, if you are still making any money, consider yourself lucky. Most business owners are in terrible shape. Even bank managers are struggling. They have all this money, but credit-worthy customers don't want loans. The people who need loans don't qualify. If banks lend, they worry they won't get repaid. If they don't, they miss their targets. Everyone is having a hard time. Everyone. A vlogger filmed a deserted scene in the heart of Shanghai. He said, I'm at Huijin Life Plaza by Luban Road Subway Station in Huangpu District. Look how quiet it is. This is still a prime location, right in the heart of the old Luwan area of Huangpu. There used to be lots of stores here. They opened, closed, and opened again. But this year, basically no new businesses have moved in. They just can't get going. This spot used to be a Starbucks. It couldn't stay open. There wasn't enough food traffic. Lianjia's real estate contract center used to be on the third floor here. It later moved to Xintiandi. It's so quiet here. It just feels bleak. The vlogger said many businesses in the area had closed, including beef shops, barbecue restaurants, and tutoring centers. Both sides of the street and the shopping area below were quiet, with many empty storefronts. Despite the prime location in Huangpu District, there was very little foot traffic. He believes the main reason is that the economy has yet to recover. Most ordinary people's income goes toward rent and mortgage payments, leaving little to spend. Some economists and prominent online commentators say home prices will rise two or three times over. He urged people to assess those irresponsible statements rationally. He said housing prices ultimately depend on the economy. Without a recovery, prices will struggle to pick up. The vlogger said it was sad to see a once-busy area so deserted. He suggested opening a night market and allowing street vendors, if the government agrees, to bring some life back. Huangpu has the highest population density in the city's urban districts. A night market could attract people and help unemployed young people earn something. That would be better than leaving so much space unused. In Shanghai, trash cans have already been searched 8 times before sunrise, get there late, and there's nothing left to pick through. That's the reality. It feels like we don't even need to sort our trash anymore. Each bin gets searched at least dozens of times a day. Yet we are told national average savings are 118,900 yuan per person. That average doesn't reflect people like us. For years, I've left drink bottles and delivery boxes beside the trash cans. It's not because I can't put them inside. The bins in our neighborhood are deep. I see elderly people bending in up to their waists to search through them. People commented, that's exactly how it is. This is Shanghai. Another wrote, that average doesn't seem to have much to do with the money I owe the bank. Someone else said, the sanitation workers in our neighborhood have already taken over all the bins. Nobody else gets a chance to search through them. Shanghai's downturn is also hitting its once-busy nightlife businesses, one young man told his friends on camera. Guys, Baoshan in Shanghai has fallen. Guys, business in Shanghai Baoshan District has collapsed. My friends are almost going hungry. I've decided that if it's game over for us in Shanghai tomorrow, I'll take them to raise pigs. We could become full-time pig farmers. His friends answered together, Yes, yes, you can make money raising pigs too. Nothing wrong with that. That works. One person commented, most of these young people really do come from rural areas, but getting a nightlife job in Shanghai meant landing a rare chance to earn good money. Now they are thinking about going home to raise pigs. It's an odd scene. Young people have it so hard these days. Even I can hardly believe I'm still getting by in Shanghai after almost two years without a job. I haven't packed up and left. I don't know how I've managed it. I'm 35. The age people online call forced retirement. I came to Shanghai right after graduation. I spent four or five years trying different jobs without a clear direction. Then I decided to focus on managing a company's own online customer communities and sales channels. I kept doing that until I lost my job. The vlogger said she initially thought it would be a normal gap between jobs. But after sending resumes for three or four months without a response, she grew anxious. She began applying for all kinds of positions, hoping for any steady income. Still, she heard nothing or was told she wasn't a good fit. She then realized her skills had depended on her company's resources and platform. Without them, she didn't know how to turn those skills into income. So she tried to find her own way forward. First, she created online content, posting four blogs and one video about anxiety. But views were low, and she got little positive feedback, so she quit. Looking back, she felt that was inevitable. She had never figured out how to make money from it, she just wanted to stay busy. Next, she tried earning money by playing video games, but she found she wasn't suited to it. She was simply playing. To keep herself from sinking further, she became a game host, known as a DM, at a murder mystery role-playing venue. Her base pay was below Shanghai's minimum wage, but she enjoyed the work and treated it as part recreation, part livelihood. After just over a month, the owner asked her to manage the whole venue. She wanted to apply her online business skills in person and prove herself. She handled everything from the team and daily operations to customer relationships and the quality of the performances. She was there almost whenever she wasn't sleeping. She also advanced nearly 2,000 yuan of her own money, trusting the owner's promise to reimburse her. Just as business started improving, the owner disappeared. She never received four months' pay or her money back. Angry, she filed for labor arbitration, her first time doing so in more than a decade of work. She is still waiting, with no result. Later, a friend recommended a live streaming agency that promised guaranteed pay of 7,000 to 8,000 yuan for the first two months. Hoping to ease the pressure, she joined, followed the operations team's guidance, and reviewed her performance every day. After nearly a month, the team suddenly said it didn't know how to help her succeed and ended the arrangement. She never received any of the guaranteed pay. She had worked a month for nothing. She couldn't understand why an ordinary person trying to work hard and get by faced so many setbacks, but she had no time to dwell on it. Life had to go on. She still believes that every step you take counts. When she was recruiting staff, she had joined several group chats for part-time game hosts. Now she was the one looking for work. She became a freelance host, going wherever work was available. It was the most rewarding decision she had made in almost two years. The income wasn't much, but at least it covered her rent. People asked why she didn't return to her hometown, given Shanghai's high living costs. She said differences with her parents, practical limits, and emotional ties all affected that decision. Going home wasn't as simple as wanting to. Her advice was to return if you can and keep trying to get by if you can't. She admitted she was still struggling with unemployment. She couldn't promise things would improve or offer a method guaranteed to work. But she could share what she had learned. If you can't find a job and don't know what to do, try something in the field you know. Put in time and effort, but avoid spending too much money. Right now, cash is your most important resource for survival. Staying afloat had to come first. One person commented, maybe it's only when you are unemployed that you realize how few ways you have to make a living. Another wrote, after watching your video, I suddenly feel less anxious. There really are people worse off than me. A video by an urban exploration blogger in Shanghai's Lujiazui recently went viral. Another blogger has exposed Shanghai's false prosperity. I'm back in Lujiazui, Shanghai. I came at night to check the lights inside the buildings in China's leading central business district and see whether the impression they create is real. Last time, we looked at the Wei Lai Ji building. Then this building caught my eye. It's lit up from top to bottom too. Looking at those lights, you'd think lots of people were still working at 8 pm. It's the same pattern. The building even changes colors. But on some floors, You can clearly see that it's empty inside from a distance you can't tell at all. The vlogger then went inside and continued filming. He said, It's 8pm now. It's 8pm and every floor is still lit up. Every floor. Every room. It's all staged. Nobody's left on the 21st floor. But the lights are still on. There isn't a single person inside. Yet all the lights are on. That's how they create that glow from inside. It's even brighter up ahead. The lights are turned up like a dance hall. He found no one on several floors, including the 16th and 28th. Many empty rooms were locked, and removed plastic panels lay scattered on the floor. Yet all the lights along the outer windows were on. From a distance, the whole building glowed, as though many employees were still working late. He said it was a deliberate light show meant to create an image of prosperity. He told viewers to enjoy the nighttime scenery. But not to assume it meant the area was thriving or highly developed. He said that impression was false. CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, recently said Shanghai's office vacancy rate reached 24.5% in the second quarter of this year. That was the highest among 20 major cities worldwide. Beijing ranked 8th at 17.9%. Shanghai has become the city with the world's highest office vacancy rate. Shanghai's office vacancy rate has risen 5.1 percentage points since the fourth quarter of 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak. That exceeds the increases of 3.8 percentage points in New York, 2.6 in London, and 0.7 in Tokyo. Media reports point to slower investment by foreign companies as one major reason for Shanghai's high office vacancy rate. According to China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, net foreign direct investment into China totaled $26.6 billion in this year's second quarter, down 23% from the first quarter. American and European companies have cut investment. Some Japanese companies have also reduced investment in China, citing factors including worsening relationships between the two countries. Mr. Zhang, who has lived in Shanghai for nearly 70 years, said he was shocked by how quiet its once thriving shopping districts had become. He said Jing'an Shopping Mall, a well-known Shanghai landmark, used to draw large crowds. Now it feels deserted. From the outside, it still looks brightly lit. But once you go in, you find that most doors have closed. The people are gone. It's quiet, like a ghost town. The shopping area around Shanghai Railway Station, one of the city's busiest transportation hubs, tells a similar story. Mr. Zhang said, the underground passages at the new railway station used to be lined with shops and packed with people. Now nine out of ten storefronts are closed. Only one is still operating. It's completely different from before, he added. I've lived I've lived almost 70 years, and I've never seen Shanghai this depressed. A resident of Jing'an District said that when they went to Changping Road for lunch, almost an entire row of restaurants were closed. Restaurant brands once popular with office workers had stopped operating. The resident said, even downtown businesses can't hold on. Another person wrote, 10 years ago, Nanjing Road was packed. Now the foot traffic probably isn't even a tenth of what it was. A vlogger filmed streets near Changshou Road in Shanghai's Putuo District. Many stores along the street were closed, even though this is a fairly central part of the district. He said people used to line up here. In the comments, someone said their younger sister had a 480-square-foot storefront on Ningxia Road in Putuo. The previous owner had sold it for 4 million yuan. Now it was selling for just over 1 million yuan. In a video filmed in downtown Shanghai, one person said, At the intersection of South Xizang Road and Lujiabang Road, storefronts used to be almost impossible to get. Now they're just sitting empty. It's close to Red House Hospital, so the location isn't bad. Is business competition really this intense now? Business competition has become so intense. Three years ago, taking over this spot required a transfer fee of 300,000 yuan. The place next door required at least 100,000 yuan just to move in. Now neither fee is required. Rent has dropped to just over 10,000 yuan. And it's still been sitting empty for so long. This is Shanghai. The Shen Yun Road pedestrian street in Chuanxia, in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, used to thrive and draw large crowds. In just a few years, it has become quiet. Apart from a handful of stores still open at either end, most storefronts have been vacant for a long time. The Indo-Asian News Service cited a report linking Shanghai's economic troubles to the lasting effects of pandemic lockdowns, a weak property market, worsening local government finances, low consumer spending, and the departure of some foreign companies and highly paid workers. The report came from Dawn, Pakistan's oldest and most influential mainstream National English Language Daily. They said the decline of Shanghai, a major engine of China's economy, had become impossible to hide. Even a newspaper in Pakistan, one of the Chinese Communist Party's closest allies, was discussing it openly. Even mainland Chinese media have acknowledged that Shanghai's downturn reflects several crises happening at once, including population decline and an economic slowdown. The birth rate keeps falling, and many kindergartens and schools face closure or mergers. Businesses are shutting down in large numbers. Even internet and technology companies, once seen as sources of stable, well-paid jobs, are laying people off more often. Many young people and workers from elsewhere are leaving Shanghai. Meanwhile, the continuing property slump has sharply reduced many families' wealth. The problem now goes far beyond people simply cutting back on spending. As malls empty, stores close, home prices fall, and jobs disappear, confidence in the future is fading fast. More and more ordinary people are losing hope.