AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.The Chinese Communist Party has spent years trying to make “positive energy” the dominant mood of the country’s internet. It’s no longer working.Listen · 8:16 min Credit...Dongyan XuSept. 7, 2026One of the hottest videos on the popular Chinese site Bilibili in the past two weeks is a quasi-serious guide on how to survive as a homeless person.Sleep near garbage bins where “supplies” are replenished, use cardboard to insulate yourself from the damp and avoid surveillance cameras, the video suggested. It was viewed more than six million times and was briefly ranked the site’s No. 2 video.Viewers jokingly called it “Youth Study,” the name of the Communist Youth League’s political education program, and “a required course for young people in 2026.”The Chinese Communist Party has spent years trying to make “positive energy” the dominant mood of the country’s internet. Online platforms, it dictates, should amplify narratives of economic achievement, gratitude toward the party and confidence in China’s future.Discontent has occasionally erupted after disasters, scandals or particularly brutal government actions. But something feels different lately. The pessimism is persistent. It has become part of the everyday social media feed, and can sometimes turn subversive.China’s economic growth is slowing. A prolonged property crash has eroded the value of many families’ biggest asset while jobs have become harder to find and less secure. As the malaise deepens, more social media users are abandoning a cheery, compliant public performance and creating counternarratives that censorship can sometimes erase but not easily rebut.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT