Against the backdrop of decades of breakneck economic and technological expansion that has reshaped every layer of Chinese society, Generation Z in the country is grappling with unprecedented levels of uncertainty about everything from career prospects to romantic relationships to the constant pressure to keep pace with societal expectations. In this climate of widespread disillusionment, an unexpected public figure has emerged as a trusted voice for millions of anxious young people: 54-year-old anthropologist Biao Xiang, not a A-list pop star or box office movie star.
Xiang, currently director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, has built a massive, loyal following across Chinese digital and physical spaces for his unflinching focus on youth anxiety and actionable frameworks for navigating it. His ability to name the unspoken pain points of modern Chinese youth life has turned him into a cultural phenomenon, with the popular mantra “When in doubt, ask Biao Xiang” circulating widely across domestic social media.
The depth of his appeal was on full display during a recent speaking event in Singapore, where roughly 500 attendees—most of them members of the Chinese diaspora—packed a local auditorium to hear him speak for more than an hour, followed by a question-and-answer session. When the event wrapped up, dozens of attendees lined up for hours just to meet Xiang and snap a photo with him, with one anonymous 23-year-old Chinese graduate describing the scene as “an academic fan meeting.” That same graduate, who requested anonymity out of fear that speaking to foreign media could harm her future job prospects in China, summed up the sentiment driving Xiang’s popularity: “The transition from school to the real world brings a lot of uncertainty now, and people often feel anxious because they don’t know how to face it. People need an anchor in life. And his words make us feel there is someone that gets me.”
Xiang’s reach extends far beyond overseas speaking engagements. He has been featured in major Chinese domestic media outlets and has toured top university campuses across the country, including his alma mater, Peking University. Earlier this year, one campus talk had to be live-streamed to a wider audience after the auditorium filled to capacity long before the event began.
In his Singapore address, Xiang broke down the core dynamic driving youth unease: In modern competitive China, many young people tie their entire sense of self-worth to external approval from rigid systems, ranging from high-stakes university entrance exams to securing a stable, elite job. This constant chase for validation, he argues, is not only emotionally exhausting but psychologically damaging. Instead, he encourages young people to shift their focus to building meaningful connections with others, using those relationships to cultivate a clearer, more grounded understanding of themselves.
Speaking to the BBC during his time in Singapore, Xiang noted that while widespread public discussion of systemic discontent remains politically sensitive and heavily censored in China, he sees his role as an academic to openly name the problems that everyone recognizes but few dare to discuss. “Everyone knows where the issue is, but they are reluctant to look at it. Sometimes it is too painful to look at, or they don’t have a way,” he explained over tea. “But as an academic, it is not terrifying if you can describe it – that’s how you analyse and manage it.”
Xiang frames contemporary Chinese society as sitting at a critical “turning point,” where rapid economic and social transformation has left people searching for a new collective narrative to make sense of their lives. He points to a stark contradiction at the heart of modern China: a globally powerful, increasingly assertive nation that is home to a generation of deeply uncertain, disillusioned young people, even after decades of unprecedented advancement. It is his job, he says, to unpack the underlying forces driving this tension—a observation that aligns with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s own framing of China’s “principal contradiction” as “between the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development.”
Xiang has coined memorable, accessible terms to describe the forces shaping young people’s anxiety. He calls the relentless cycle of overwork just to maintain basic stability “Floating,” comparing it to a hummingbird that must constantly flap its wings just to stay aloft. He also developed the concept of “the nearby,” arguing that modern young people are so fixated on either their immediate personal struggles or distant global trends that they neglect the middle space of local community and close connections, leaving them feeling isolated and adrift.
These ideas have struck a powerful chord with young Chinese searching for answers to their unspoken stress. On Chinese social platform RedNote, one user wrote: “He consistently views issues from the perspective of the vulnerable, attributes personal stress to macro-level causes, and encourages people to actively engage with life – it’s truly wonderful.” Another commenter noted: “He never spouts empty, feel-good platitudes; instead, he crouches down to face real-life dilemmas alongside us.” For fan Zihan Han, Xiang’s willingness to speak candidly sets him apart from other public figures: “Those who have said similar things aren’t as kick-ass as Teacher Xiang, yet people who are as kick-ass as him haven’t said such things.”
Xiang’s own life experience gives him unique insight into China’s generational shifts. Born in 1972, he came of age during a previous turning point in Chinese history, when the country emerged from the chaos of the Mao era to open up to global trade, rapidly urbanize, and cultivate a new generation of entrepreneurs. Growing up in Wenzhou, a coastal city that transformed into a thriving industrial port, he witnessed this economic boom first-hand: “It was a vast landscape of small business owners. Most people didn’t care too much about education, the focus was on practical matters – specifically, how to make money.”
The children of that boom generation grew up enjoying decades of double-digit economic growth, but the slowdown of China’s economy following the COVID-19 pandemic broke the long-held social contract that hard work would automatically deliver security and success. Today, youth anxiety permeates every stratum of society: youth unemployment hit a record 21.3% in 2023 before the government halted public release of the data, and even young people who land coveted stable jobs in the civil service, major corporations, or tech firms live in constant fear of layoffs. Online, young people frequently vent about punishing 996 working schedules, toxic office culture, and the widely resented “curse of 35,” a common industry practice that excludes job applicants over 35 years old.
While strict censorship limits open discussion of the scale of this discontent, the pervasive sense of anxiety leaks into public discourse in other ways, regularly igniting heated online anger over issues from university entrance exams to bride price traditions to food safety scandals. Over the past several years, terms describing this collective mood have gone viral, most notably “lying flat”—a movement that rejects the endless grind of the rat race entirely—and “involution,” a term used to describe a cycle of extreme competition that produces little meaningful reward for participants.
Xiang identifies two key systemic forces that have amplified youth anxiety: the overheated property market and the rapid expansion of China’s higher education system. Decades of property booms, fueled by local governments’ reliance on land sale revenue, have tied most Chinese families’ sense of security and social status directly to the value of their homes. At the same time, the rapid expansion of university enrolment has raised the bar for what counts as a “successful” education, intensifying competition at every stage of life. The end result, Xiang argues, is a one-size-fits-all blueprint for success that nearly 1.4 billion people are all chasing at the same time: “When 1.4 billion people are all in the same race, that is involution.”
Xiang first realized he had broken out of academic circles around three years ago, when a digital nomad camp that hosted a talk from him raised its prices immediately after his visit. Many of his academic peers, he says, prioritize traditional research publishing and view his public-facing work with cool detachment, with some even advising him to “cherish your feathers”—a common Chinese idiom meaning to protect one’s professional reputation. But Xiang embraces his unexpected popularity as a force for good, saying he would take the label of “influencer” as a compliment: “Because the real influence I can have is to make people think for themselves.”