Loneliness in China spurs growth of companionship economy

Undergraduate Xiaoyun, 20, spends her nights talking to strangers to hone her counselling skills and to earn some extra keep.

- Aw Cheng Wei

The psychology major at a university in south-western Sichuan province started working part-time as a “pei liao” – or conversation buddy – in April 2023, a few months after China abruptly lifted its strict Covid-19 restrictions in December 2022.  

She chanced upon the part-time job online after she noticed that many people around her were losing sleep after China’s abrupt policy change towards the pandemic.

The sudden lifting of restrictions had caused many of Miss Xiaoyun’s peers, who had started university life in a zero-Covid environment under the strict measures, to have difficulties adjusting to living with the Covid-19 virus, she told The Straits Times.

“I thought being a ‘pei liao’ was a good way to test out counselling theories I learnt in school and to practise having empathy,” she added. Miss Xiaoyun makes between 600 yuan (S$110) and 2,000 yuan a month, depending on the types of packages her clients sign up for. The amount excludes the 20 per cent the app she works for charges her.

Miss Xiaoyun is part of China’s growing “pei ban jing ji” or companionship economy that has developed due to the increasingly solitary lifestyles of the Chinese. It is estimated it will be worth 50 billion yuan by 2025, according to a report by state-owned investment firm Sinolink Securities.

The companionship economy has emerged as more people stay single, forgoing the traditional path of marriage and children, amid an economic slowdown and an increasingly educated population.

Over the last decade, the number of marriages in China has been on a downtrend from a peak of 13.47 million unions in 2013 barring an upturn of 12.4 per cent in 2023 as a result of a backlog owing to the pandemic.

China’s previous one-child policy has also led to younger generations of Chinese being dubbed “China’s lonely generation”.