If you have a Bachelor degree it's a tough pill to swallow to work on an assembly line when your entire life you were told that a Bachelors degree would guarantee you a white collar job.
Earning $5-6k working on an assembly line in a city where rent is around $200-300/month isn't worth it, so people decide to quit the job market to either take competitive civil service exams, studying to apply for grad school, or start small businesses (eg. Street vending, dropshipping, influencers) while staying with parents.
We saw the same thing in the US after 2008 with skilled workers not as open to working service jobs.
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> If your investors are willing to dump $2 Billion before turning a profit, your runway is far longer at 0% interest rates than at 5.25% interest rates.
Ok. Fair point. That said, PDD's stock has held pretty stable following their COVID era peak. They're still trading 4-5x above their listing price, which was what was used to raise the equity round, so they have a pretty healthy bottom line.