A new corporate euphemism is rattling China's technology workers. According to the South China Morning Post, the term "optimisation" — language Chinese tech firms use for workforce changes — increasingly translates, in employees' ears, to one thing: unemployment.
Reporting by Wency Chen for the South China Morning Post says major Chinese tech companies, including Meituan, Baidu and Xiaomi, have been trimming their workforces. Those cuts are fueling fears among staff that they are being replaced by artificial intelligence.
The anxiety is personal and immediate. The South China Morning Post opens its account with a small, telling scene: late last month, a friend checked in on a Meituan employee simply to see whether he had survived the latest round.
The sources do not specify how many jobs have been eliminated, or how directly AI is responsible versus broader cost-cutting. What they document is a mood — a workforce reading layoff announcements and corporate language with growing dread, and connecting their own job security to the rise of automation.
Why it matters: China is home to some of the world's largest tech employers, and how its biggest companies frame and carry out AI-era job cuts offers an early, real-world signal of how the technology may reshape white-collar employment well beyond China's borders.