Tanner Brown

On the stone steps of Mount Tai, one of China's most famous peaks, visitors can now buy more than water, snacks, or a ticket to the summit. They can buy companionship.

For a few hundred yuan -- perhaps $40 -- hikers can hire what is known in Chinese as a pei-pa, or "climbing companion," to walk with them, carry bags, take photos, chat, and make the climb feel less lonely. Similar services are spreading across Chinese cities and tourist destinations: paid partners for running, sightseeing, shopping, hospital visits, hot pot dinners, and weekend walks.

This is China's "companionship economy," one of the country's more revealing consumer trends. There is no official market size, but estimates cited by Chinese state media put the sector at about 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in 2025. Services range from practical help to something more emotional: attention, conversation, encouragement, and predictability.

Liu Hao, 28, an employee at a state-owned company in Henan province, summarized the appeal: "Along the way, we only talked about the scenery and the route. No one asked how much you earned or when you were getting married. In the past, when traveling with friends, you always had to take care of the other person's emotions."

It isn't that friendship has become transactional. It's that China's weak consumer economy has redirected discretionary spending toward lower-cost emotional rewards.

That matters because the companies best positioned for China's next stage of consumer growth may not be those selling another handbag, car, or appliance. They may be platforms that organize local services, short trips, lifestyle discovery, gig labor, and small rituals that make urban life feel less isolating.

Companies like online delivery company Meituan, travel platform Trip.com, Douyin, social networking and e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu, local travel platforms, wellness providers, dating apps, senior-care services, and gig-economy companies all sit close to this shift. Some may never directly sell companionship. But they already control the tools through which such services are discovered, booked, reviewed, recommended, and monetized.

The trend reflects a broader change in Chinese consumption. For decades, the country's consumer story was built around upward mobility: apartments, cars, electronics, luxury goods, overseas travel, and brand upgrades. That model has weakened. The property downturn has damaged household wealth. Youth unemployment and job insecurity have made younger consumers cautious. Marriage rates have fallen. Urban migration has left many people far from family networks.

Yet the desire to spend hasn't disappeared. A consumer who won't splurge on a luxury bag may still pay for a weekend hike, a pet, a fitness class, a short domestic trip, or a companion to eat hot pot with.

The clearest beneficiaries are local-services platforms. Meituan already dominates large parts of China's offline consumption infrastructure, from food delivery and restaurant bookings to hotels, travel, and in-store services. A companionship economy turns more offline moments into searchable, bookable products. A dinner isn't just a meal. A hike isn't just transportation and a ticket. A medical appointment isn't just a hospital visit. Each can become a service bundle.

Trip.com and smaller travel platforms could also benefit as solo and small-group travel grows. Younger travelers increasingly want customized experiences, local guides, social interaction, and activities that can be shared online. Paid companions are an extreme version of that trend, but the underlying demand is broader: travel that feels personal and socially meaningful.

Social platforms may be even more important. Xiaohongshu and Douyin are where many lifestyle behaviors are discovered before they become mainstream. A new service category doesn't need a national chain to scale. It needs trust, photos, reviews, and repeatable recommendations.

There are risks. Companionship services are fragmented, hard to standardize, and vulnerable to safety concerns. They often operate in a gray zone: informal, lightly standardized, and sometimes arranged through social platforms or private messages rather than established travel or care providers. That has raised concerns that some listings could be misrepresented, unsafe, or used to disguise more illicit services.

For platforms, the challenge is verifying identities, policing boundaries, and making sure a market built around emotional intimacy doesn't become a regulatory liability.

Investors should also avoid overstating the opportunity. A 50 billion yuan estimate is meaningful, but still tiny compared with China's broader retail and travel markets.

The better way to see the trend is as a signal. China's consumer recovery may be less about a broad rebound in confidence and more about pockets of spending where companies can convert anxiety, loneliness, aging, and lifestyle aspiration into services.

For investors, the winners will be companies that can create trust, manage labor quality, and turn one-off emotional purchases into repeat behavior. That favors platforms with large user bases, local merchant networks, recommendation engines, and payment infrastructure.

China's consumers are still cautious. They aren't necessarily ready to spend big. But they are willing to spend small amounts on services that make life feel warmer, easier, or less solitary.

But the trend is far short of a panacea. Lin Jiang, a professor in the Department of Economics at Sun Yat-sen University, argues that the rise of the loneliness economy is the result of both changing social structures and technological development. He has what he calls his formulation: "Commercial means can relieve the pain, but they cannot cure the illness."

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June 19, 2026 02:30 ET (06:30 GMT)

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