CHONGQING: Amid an economic slowdown that has cast a pall over job prospects, young people in China are turning increasingly to figurines and soft toys to lighten their moods.

Their spending on such guzi has led to a boom in the industry, creating a bright spot in the country’s otherwise gloomy business and retail environment.

Guzi, a homophone of the English word “goods”, refers to merchandise based on characters in animation films, cartoons and games, including blind boxes, acrylic figurines and soft toys.

China’s guzi industry is expected to hit a market value of 110.1 billion yuan (RM68 billion) by 2026, almost doubling from the 60 billion yuan recorded in 2023, based on data from a report earlier in 2024 by government think-tank Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and trade association China Animation Industry.

Shops selling such products have become a fixture in malls across China, with the popular ones reportedly making more than 10,000 yuan in daily revenue.

Walk into any one of these shops and you are likely to find merchandise based on Japanese animation film like My Neighbour Totoro or Spirited Away, or Chinese films such as Douluo Continent, Heaven’s Official Blessings or Under One Person. Prices for blind boxes start from 69 yuan but can vary widely, depending on the item’s rarity.

In particular, Labubu – an elvish-looking character inspired by Nordic fairy tales – has taken the world by storm, with rarer figurines going for US$7,400 (RM33,300) on online marketplace eBay.

Figures from Tianyancha, one of China’s largest company databases, showed that the number of companies in the country’s guzi industry grew 14 per cent between January and November in 2024 to a current total of 64,000, compared with the same period in 2023.

Most of these shops are in Shanghai (243), followed by Beijing (221) and Chengdu (195), the capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China, one of the country’s most populous regions.

Young Chinese told The Straits Times that buying guzi – which has been compared to trading cards, celebrity posters and concert memorabilia – is a kind of “emotional spending”.

Chongqing undergraduate Liu Zhengmei, 20, said displaying toys on her desk and around her university hostel room gives her and her roommates “spiritual energy”.

She estimates that she has spent about 6,000 yuan on these goods since she started collecting figurines earlier this year.

“They me get through my busier days and distract me from worries such as whether or not I want to apply to graduate school or start working, which are problems that feel quite big, especially on bad days,” she said.

Youth unemployment among those aged between 16 and 24 has been persistently high, hitting a record 18.8 per cent in July and August this year, after the Chinese government revised its data collection last year to exclude students.

These months are typically the graduation season in China.

Employees in both private and public sectors have been complaining about salary cuts and wage delays.

Not everyone is buying guzi for comfort; some are collecting these items, especially the sought-after or limited edition ones, as a form of investment.

Mr Huang Yan, 21, an undergraduate in Shenyang, said he would sometimes browse through Xianyu, a popular second-hand marketplace app in China, to look for rare guzi to keep or re-sell.

He does not keep track of his earnings, but made about 500 yuan in March this year by re-selling an item that featured figurines of kittens playing on a model of an ancient roof in China.

He had bought a blind box in Beijing when he visited the city in 2023 around the Mid-Autumn Festival break, because he thought that the series featuring the cats were cute.

“Selling second-hand or limited edition items could be a viable sideline for me in the future, given that it is so hard to find a job now,” Mr Huang said.

Administrative manager Bai Wanxia, 25, told ST that she went to malls in Yishun, Jurong and Tampines when she visited Singapore for a week in April to check out what the local guzi scene was like.

She was looking for items that could only be purchased in Singapore or Southeast Asia, to give them as souvenirs to friends or to sell online.

Ms Bai, who is based in southern Fujian province, is also a collector of merchandise of Crayon Shin-Chan, Hello Kitty and Molly, a character created by a Hong Kong artist.

“The recent craze over guzi provides good business opportunities, so I thought I would stock up on some limited edition ones, especially those not readily available in China, to see if they would grow in value over time,” she said.

Toy store chains have benefited from the trend.

Revenue for Pop Mart, the trendy Chinese toy retail chain known for its blind boxes, grew by between 100 and 125 per cent in the three months to September, compared with the same period in 2023.

Its rival Top Toy saw year-on-year revenue grow 37.9 per cent in the first half of 2024 to 429 million yuan.

The bump in toy sales has brought cheer to China’s flagging retail sector.

The world’s second-largest economy has struggled to recover from a clampdown on its property, tech and finance sectors and its zero-Covid policy that ended in December 2022.

Ms Liu, the Chongqing undergraduate, said she was happy to spend on toys and figurines, as the Covid-19 pandemic taught her that “nothing is more important than living in the moment”.