Earlier this month, nearly a thousand people lined up outside TencentTencentBest known for its super-app WeChat, Tencent is a Chinese technology conglomerate and a major player in the video gaming industry.READ MORE’s headquarters in Shenzhen to get a piece of software installed on their devices.
The crowd — which included students, retirees, and general office workers — wanted to get access to the much-hyped OpenClaw, an open-source artificial intelligence agent built by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger.
The frenzy around OpenClaw in China — dubbed “raising a lobster,” referring to the AI agent’s red logo — captured a deeper fear among workers: Tools meant to boost productivity could soon replace them. For many, mastering OpenClaw has been less about curiosity than survival in a workplace where AI adoption is accelerating rapidly.
You can get eliminated anytime. How can you not be anxious?”
“It feels like playing Squid Game,” Shanghai-based Lambert Li, who was among the early users of OpenClaw, told Rest of World, referring to the Netflix drama where contestants compete in brutal elimination games. “You can get eliminated anytime. How can you not be anxious?” Li’s employer laid off 30% of its workforce in 2025, cutting employees who were unable to adapt quickly enough to AI.
The growth of AI has triggered global anxiety about job loss — and it is most palpable in China, where the government is pouring enormous resources into artificial intelligence, and betting on it to drive the country’s future economic growth. China has one of the world’s largest AI user bases. The massive push has caused a constant fear of redundancy among workers, coupled with the social stigma of job loss. Experts believe this could have larger economic and social implications for the country.
“When a large number of middle-class workers and young people worry that AI could disrupt their careers, they tend to cut back on spending and increase precautionary savings in case they are laid off,” Li Chen, a Chinese economy researcher at the Beijing-based think tank Anbound, told Rest of World. “That could hinder the government’s efforts to stimulate the economy.”
After joining the OpenClaw hype for a few days, software developer Li quickly realized the agent was not really useful for him. Unlike popular bots like ChatGPT or Gemini, OpenClaw operates directly on a user’s computer and autonomously executes tasks across files and apps. Li doesn’t use OpenClaw regularly because he’s worried it would make mistakes if given too much access to his work files and systems.
But he feels he cannot ignore AI entirely. Since last year, the 35-year-old has jumped from one AI tool to another, testing every major model update and productivity agent he hears about.
On popular Chinese social media platform RedNote, #AIAnxiety has drawn around 2.6 million views. Users frequently share personal worries: “Trying to keep up with AI is more exhausting than the job itself,” one post reads. “My boss asked me to write AI code to replace several staff members,” says another. “When will it be my turn?”
In an August 2025 survey of 38,000 working adults across 34 countries, nearly a third of the respondents said they “strongly believe” AI could replace them, and that they were actively seeking new employment.
China has been very optimistic about AI, according to a KPMG survey. It showed 69% of Chinese respondents said AI’s general benefits outweighed its risks, compared to 35% of Americans.
A study by Peking University analyzed more than a million online job postings in China between 2018 and 2024. It found that functions that could be performed using AI had seen a significant decline in hiring. These roles included computer programming, accounting, editing, and sales.
In a May 2025 survey by Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, 85.5% of 11,814 Chinese respondents said they were worried about how AI could affect their employment.
The unemployment rate for Chinese youth aged 16–24 years is higher than the global average, and hovered around 15%–19% in 2025. In the U.S., the unemployment rate for the same age group is 9%–11%.
“As AI reshapes the job market, the challenges China faces in terms of changing the education structurally — combined with social pressure on individuals to position themselves for the future — could make the anxiety facing Chinese youth even more acute than in the West,” Jack Linzhou Xing, a postdoctoral fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, told Rest of World.
If they fire me, they fire me. … I will wait for some welfare handouts.”
AI anxiety is also fueled by a growing gap between China’s narrative of technological progress and the reality many workers experience on the ground, where competition is intensifying even as the country races ahead in global tech development, said Xing, who researches the sociology of technology in China.
Frank Wang, a 28-year-old programmer in Chengdu, told Rest of World he used to be very anxious about AI replacing him at work until last year, but has now realized he wouldn’t be able to fight this trend.
“I am now just ‘lying flat,’” Wang said, referring to a viral phrase that means doing the bare minimum at work. “If they fire me, they fire me. … I will wait for some welfare handouts.”
AI anxiety has not spared even non-technical workers. Earlier this month, product marketing manager Betty Lai was told her company’s annual work appraisals would include employees’ knowledge and use of AI. A colleague immediately organized a voluntary OpenClaw training workshop and had attendees fighting for a front-row seat at the event.
“The pressure [to use AI] sometimes comes from the company expecting us to become more efficient with these tools,” Lai told Rest of World. “But that’s not always true yet. It can take time to figure out how to actually incorporate them into your job. … There’s no point in being anxious. We’re already in this wave. Either you ride it, or you get wiped out.”
