By Ethan Wang, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo
BEIJING (Reuters) - The frugal trend that began in China during the economic disruption of the pandemic and deepened amid the crisis in the property market is intensifying as Gen Z shuns government calls to spend, spend, spend and doubles down on saving.
On China's Instagram-like Xiaohongshu, or RedNote as it is known in the West, many under-30s are swapping notes on how to spend less on office lunches and shop on the cheap.
Influencers are also sharing tips on turning financial discipline into a lifestyle. Posts on how to save money total more than 1.5 million with more than 130 million views.
"I feel that the economy is quite bad, and it seems like it's hard for everyone to make money, so I think it's important to protect my own wallet," said Ava Su, who joined Alibaba after graduating just over six months ago and earns a relatively comfortable salary.
Su, 26, who sees the internet industry as "unstable", said she had cut back on impulse spending and had a long-term plan to save up 2 million yuan ($273,512) - 100 times her monthly salary.
According to data from Yu'e Bao, a popular online money market fund on the Alipay payment app, users born after 2000 each made an average of 20 deposits a month as of the end of 2024, double the number of May.
The May figure was itself 10 percent higher than the previous year. Yu'e Bao also said the funds each person had in their account that month was nearly 3,000 yuan, 50% more than the same month the previous year.
Some economists warn entrenched saving could hollow out demand just as policymakers are counting on domestic consumption to bolster China's gross domestic product. Sustained pessimism, which has already led to falling consumer prices from cars to bubble milk tea, will also dent the longer-term potential of the world's second-biggest economy.
The situation is a stark contrast to the free-spending attitudes of the so-called "moonlight" generation, a term used to describe those born in the 1980s and 1990s.
They saw only expanding job opportunities, rising incomes, and a quality of life that kept on improving, said Ho-fung Hung, professor in political economy at Johns Hopkins University, and were known for spending their entire salary by the end of every month.
But COVID-19, the economic slowdown and the government's crackdown on tech companies and other parts of the private sector made today's young people feel they needed to prepare for the worst, he added.
"This loss of optimism is a first since the beginning of (China's) market reform in 1978," Hung said.