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My Take | China’s tech-savvy single-person households set to grow larger, helping drive economic growth
- Mainland China had 125 million registered single-person households at the end of 2020
- This so-called lonely economy has become a new market segment for many Chinese merchants and online platform operators
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Mainland China had about 500 million registered households at the end of 2020, but 125 million of these – or one out of four – consisted of just one individual, according to the latest government data. It is mind-boggling to learn that the world’s second-largest economy has such a vast number of single-person households, the total number of which is as large as Japan’s population.
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Urbanisation, in which the population shifts from rural to urban areas, is an obvious reason for the proliferation of single-person households. The great majority of two- and three-bedroom flats provided in Chinese cities cannot support the ideal of having one big family living together. It is simply impossible at present to have four generations of a family live under one roof.
More significantly, advances in technology have made it easier for an individual – man or woman – to live alone and prosper. The wide use of online food deliveries, for example, has helped shape how single-person households thrive. This so-called lonely economy has become a new market segment for many products and services.
While there are many questions on how expansion of this lonely economy will affect the nation’s health over the long term, spending by two single-person households, for instance, tend to be larger than the expenditure of a larger household. As such, many young individuals who account for most of the country’s single-person households have boosted consumer spending, which has helped drive economic growth across the country.
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China now has nearly 1 billion internet users
China now has nearly 1 billion internet users
Chinese merchants and internet platform operators have moved swiftly to cater to the needs of this growing consumer market segment. In today’s connected world, a smartphone is all that a person needs to become part of various digital communities based on apps, from on-demand local services, ride-hailing, video gaming and social media to online shopping, banking and health care.
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