Chinese trade high-stress jobs for early retirement
Apartments cheaper than cars in some areas
A resident fishes at the semi-abandoned "Life in Venice" housing complex in Qidong, on China's east coast, on Feb. 5.
The "Life in Venice" housing development, a multibillion-dollar replica of the Italian city on the Chinese coast, stands silent. Many of the tens of thousands of homes are hollow husks of concrete and alabaster.
But in recent years the remote, partially abandoned complex has drawn new residents like Sasa Chen, a burned-out young Chinese woman who until recently worked a high-earning finance job in Shanghai.
Chen pays just 1200 RMB, or $168, a month for her apartment in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. It's so cheap that it's allowed Chen to retire at 28.
Experts say Chen is part of a broader trend that has seen a growing number of young people across China migrating to small towns and cities, taking advantage of cheap real estate prices that have been plummeting since the COVID pandemic.
It's a stark reversal from previous generations that prized upward mobility. In decades past, China's middle class flocked to megacities to chase jobs and dreams, once abundant. But as the economy cooled, expectations have soared, opportunities have dwindled and competition has grown fierce.
Most large Chinese companies require a work schedule of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Under the pressure, some young professionals have called it quits and joined a resistance movement called "lying flat " — shunning careers and capitalism for a "low-desire life."
Home prices at the "Life in Venice" development have more than halved since the downturn in China's property market a few years ago, and a lunch of noodles or a rice dish costs under $3 in the neighborhood's restaurants.
The bargain prices have benefited young people willing to live in remote but aff ordable housing. Chen describes it as the perfect life: a sea view, clean air and cheap rent.
"Life in Venice" was envisioned in the early 2010s as a weekend resort for wealthy residents from nearby Shanghai.
But demand for the complex's 46,000 units cratered after China's debt-fueled property market popped. The developer went bankrupt in 2024.
Today the site is a ghost town, with many villas just empty shells. Less than one in five apartments are occupied. Abandoned boats founder off its rundown pier and "For Sale" signs and empty storefronts line its streets. But a smattering of residents have moved in.
Chen used to work in Shanghai, making up to 700,000 yuan ($98,480) a year at a large finance firm. But she had never liked the idea of working, and after three years, she began plotting her escape.
Her plan was to save up and find somewhere to live with rent so low she could live off returns on her investments.
Chen saved 2 million yuan ($290,000) and found an apartment at "Life in Venice." With such low rent, she calculates she can live there for the rest of her life without ever having to work again.
Though "Life in Venice" doesn't have a branch of her favorite sour soup hotpot restaurant, doorto-door delivery or proximity to major hospitals, her new residence has plenty of conveniences, like a grocery store and eateries.
Chen used to dread her job, which she said "felt like marching to my own death." Now, she wakes at 10 a.m. every day, filling her days with cooking, chilling, and long walks on the beach.
"I never believed that work is the meaning of life," Chen said. "My ideal state of life is not to work and stay at places that I like."
While there's no available data about how many have left the Chinese workforce in recent years, figures show that from 2019 to 2024, Beijing lost 1.6 million people in their 20s and early 30s, according to China's capital statistic office.
"People are quitting this competition, this very clear, linear, upward career track," said Xiang Biao, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany.
China's economy has cooled in recent years, growing just 5% in 2025 — still higher than the U.S. and other rich countries, but a far cry from the double-digit growth the country saw in past decades.
As the economy slows, young Chinese are struggling to find jobs. As of December, 16.5% of 16 24-year-olds who aren't in school were unemployed.
Some, like 29-year-old Ban Zhao, are rejecting the corporate rat race altogether.
Last summer, Ban moved from a city on China's east coast to a small town in the southwestern Yunnan province that's famed for fresh, clean air and healing hot springs. There, for just 800 yuan a month ($110), Ban rents an apartment with three bedrooms.
She and her boyfriend work less than 20 hours a week, off ering yoga classes online to make ends meet.
"I can do whatever I want and not do whatever I don't want," Ban said. "I live in heaven."
Official says AI clash was over weapons
A top Pentagon official said Anthropic's dispute with the government over the use of its artificial intelligence technology in fully autonomous weapons came after a debate over how AI could be used in President Donald Trump's future Golden Dome missile defense program, which aims to put U.S. weapons in space.
U.S. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, said he came to view the AI company's ethical restrictions on the use of its chatbot Claude as an irrational obstacle as the U.S. military pursues giving greater autonomy to swarms of armed drones, underwater vehicles and other machines to compete with rivals like China that could do the same.
"I need a reliable, steady partner that gives me something, that'll work with me on autonomous, because someday it'll be real and we're starting to see earlier versions of that," Michael said in a podcast that aired Friday. "I need someone who's not going to wig out in the middle."
The comments came after the Pentagon formally designated San Francisco-based Anthropic a supply chain risk, cutting off its defense work using a rule designed to prevent foreign adversaries from harming national security systems.
Anthropic vowed to sue over the designation, which aff ects its business partnerships with other military contractors.
Trump also ordered federal agencies to immediately stop using Claude, though the Republican president gave the Pentagon six months to phase out a product that's deeply embedded in classified military systems, including those used in the Iran war.
Anthropic said it only sought to restrict its technology from being used for two high-level usages: mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons.
Michael, a former Uber executive, revealed his side of monthslong talks with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a lengthy conversation with Silicon Valley venture capitalists Jason Calacanis, David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya, co-hosts of the "All-In" podcast.
A fourth co-host, former PayPal executive David Sacks, is Trump's AI czar and was not present for the episode but was a vocal critic of Anthropic, including for its hiring of former Biden administration officials shortly after Trump returned to the White House.
As talks hit an impasse this month, Michael lashed out at Amodei on social media, saying he "has a God-complex" and "wants nothing more than to try to personally control" the military. In the podcast, however, he positioned the dispute as part of a broader military shift toward using AI.
Michael said the military is developing procedures for enabling diff erent levels of autonomy in warfare depending on the risk posed.
"This is part of the debate I had with Anthropic, which is we need AI for things like Golden Dome," Michael said, sharing a hypothetical scenario of the U.S. having only 90 seconds to respond to a Chinese hypersonic missile.
A human anti-missile operator "may not be able to discriminate with their own eyes what they're going after," but an autonomous counterattack would be a low risk "because it's in space and you're just trying to hit something that's trying to get you."
In another scenario, he said, "who could oppose if you have a military base, you have a bunch of soldiers sleeping, that you have a laser that can take down drones autonomously?"
In response to the podcast comments, Anthropic pointed to an earlier Amodei statement saying, "Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner."
Michael, the defense undersecretary for research and engineering, was sworn in last May and said he took over the military's "AI portfolio" in August. That's when he said he began scrutinizing Anthropic's contracts — some of which dated from President Joe Biden's Democratic administration. Michael said he questioned Anthropic over terms of use that he deemed too restrictive.
"I need to have the terms of service be rational relative to our mission set," he said. "So we started these negotiations. It took three months and I had to sort of give them scenarios, like this Chinese hypersonic missile example. They're like, 'OK, we'll give you an exception for that.' Well, how about this drone swarm? 'We'll give an exception for that.' And I was like, exceptions doesn't work. I can't predict for the next 20 years what (are) all the things we might use AI for."
That's when the Pentagon insisted Anthropic and other AI companies allow for "all lawful use" of their technology, Michael said.
Anthropic resisted that change, arguing that today's leading AI systems "are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons."
Its competitors — Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI — agreed to the Pentagon's terms, though some still have to get their infrastructure prepared for classified military work, Michael said. The other sticking point for Anthropic was not allowing any mass surveillance of Americans.
