{"text":[[{"start":6.9,"text":"When I moved to Beijing two years ago, I decided to pay for a gym membership. Several locals warned it was financially unwise. China was nursing the scars of the pandemic and a property crisis. Many gyms were going bankrupt, taking members’ fees with them and leaving behind a trail of disgruntled customers and abandoned treadmills. "}],[{"start":28.15,"text":"On my first visit to Oxygym, I met the manager, Will Wan. A sturdy man with a jovial exterior, he was keen to sell his gym. Located near the central business district, Oxygym is a high-end chain that caters largely to office workers. Facilities include tanks that pump oxygen into the air — hence the name — a highly prized commodity in polluted Beijing. "}],[{"start":52.25,"text":"Yet instead of extolling the 130 machines that spread across the sprawling two-floor complex (plus dance studios, basketball courts and saunas), Will had found another way to impress me: the company finances. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of gyms in China shrank from just under 50,000 to less than 30,000. Many of these bankrupt rivals, Will explained, had aggressively expanded into less-affluent cities, which were harder hit by the property crisis. Oxygym had not expanded beyond the capital, a decision that protected it from the worst of the downturn. "}],[{"start":88.25,"text":"Sounding more like a capital markets lawyer than a gym manager, he went on: “Our parent group has a diversified asset base and healthy cash flow.” He explained that even though the securities regulator had made it harder for consumer companies to pursue initial public offerings, a pathway to listing remained. Somewhere between the oxygen tanks and the discussion of regulatory regimes, my resistance wilted and I signed up. "}],[{"start":113.55,"text":"I’m glad I ignored the doubters. The gym industry stabilised a little last year and, three or four times a week, I continue to pass through Oxygym’s gleaming glass doors. “How did you survive?” I asked Will recently. “We fought hard to distinguish ourselves,” he replied. Several times he repeated the word neijuan, a reference to the relentless internal competition that has become a defining phrase in today’s China."}],[{"start":140.25,"text":"In many ways, this Beijing gym is a microcosm. Competition governs almost every aspect of Chinese life. From the notoriously gruelling university entrance exams to industrial price wars, success depends on standing out from a vast pool of hardworking rivals. Reinforced by the country’s sheer scale, the hypercompetition is also reshaping economies elsewhere, as cut-throat domestic pricing pushes Chinese manufacturers into foreign markets with their cheap electric vehicles and lab-grown diamonds. "}],[{"start":171.1,"text":"In the service sector, pressures are even more acute. Manufacturers can export excess supply overseas; gyms, restaurants and beauty salons cannot. The recent downturn sharply reduced people’s discretionary spending, leaving businesses to fight domestically for a shrinking pool of consumers who have grown more demanding about the level of service they expect, including from personal trainers."}],[{"start":195.1,"text":"Defenceless against Will’s salesmanship, I soon found myself upsold into a personal training package. I’d never had a trainer before but in Beijing they are about a third of the cost in London. Sessions typically cost between Rmb200 (£22) and Rmb600, depending on the trainer’s experience and one’s willingness to bargain. "}],[{"start":218.54999999999998,"text":"The gym employs 20 trainers, many former professional athletes or sports science graduates. I was assigned training with Shen Jie, a man of indeterminate age but extensive experience. Before our first session, he sent me a CV, a three-page document featuring 10 PT certifications, several high-resolution topless self-portraits that would not have been out of place in Sports Illustrated and a selfie with Jackie Chan (not a client). "}],[{"start":243.89999999999998,"text":"Hailing from Shandong province in eastern China, Shen showed promise as a footballer in his youth but abandoned that path — owing to the high competition — and started participating in bodybuilding contests. In the early 2000s, he moved to Beijing to be closer to the burgeoning weightlifting scene. He was hired as a trainer by an upscale gym and, over the following two decades, moved between gyms and fitness ventures, including one of the military-style weight-loss boot camps that proliferated as China’s waistlines expanded along with booming economic growth."}],[{"start":278.75,"text":"“China had introduced so much unhealthy fast food, and people didn’t realise how fattening it was. Every month, the company would sign up new customers, and the queues stretched over a kilometre long,” he recalls. At one point, Shen even hosted televised morning workouts, leading millions of viewers through exercise routines on state television. His most recent high-profile role was as coach for members of China’s Olympic ice-hockey team for the Beijing Winter Olympics. Despite the team’s lack of international glory, it’s an achievement that makes him well-overqualified to teach a journalist how to deadlift correctly."}],[{"start":315.4,"text":"Like many of his generation, Shen’s career has traced the violent swings of its modern economy. Decades of rapid expansion have been followed by abrupt slowdown. His former employer was a gym in a financial building that had overspent on expensive equipment and fancy interiors just before the pandemic hit. When it closed, Shen brought his roster of loyal clients to Oxygym. "}],[{"start":338.59999999999997,"text":"Our sessions typically involve four progressively loaded exercises focused on either the upper or lower body. Between sets, I pepper Shen with questions, partly to tap into his extensive wellness knowledge, partly to prolong the rest periods. He speaks widely about traditional Chinese medicine principles, the theoretical benefits of some niche (potentially illegal) medicines derived from rare animal products, and the history of weightlifting and steroid culture. As I strain through repetitions, he watches intently, barely blinking as he gently corrects my posture."}],[{"start":373.74999999999994,"text":"Oxygym’s standards for staff are exacting. They are assessed according to nine criteria, each stricter than the last. Such a coldly pragmatic system is typical in this version of the service economy, where massage parlours, nail salons and hairdressers promote a tiered pricing system based on experience and customer satisfaction. "}],[{"start":394.69999999999993,"text":"Customers leave online reviews for their servers, who are frequently referred to by a number instead of their name, to make it easier for returning clientele to remember. "}],[{"start":404.69999999999993,"text":"At Oxygym, the trainers retain the right to use their name, climbing the company’s hierarchy through official certifications, semi-annual written exams and strict physical benchmarks. Male and female trainers are expected to maintain body fat below 15 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, while passing physical tests befitting Navy Seals. Male trainers must deadlift twice their body weight, run 2.7km in 12 minutes and complete 15 unassisted pull-ups. For women trainers, the requirements include deadlifting one and a half times their body weight and 24 consecutive push-ups. While trainers are permitted to exercise on the gym floor, they are discouraged from visibly sweating while doing so."}],[{"start":447.0999999999999,"text":"When I ask Will what a trainer’s personal fitness level has to do with their teaching ability, he appears surprised by the question. “Even if a trainer is very experienced, if they are fat and don’t take care of their appearance, clients won’t want lessons with them,” he says. “The coach should represent an aspiration. They should embody what the student hopes to become.” If a trainer fails to meet those standards, there is a long queue of applicants waiting to take their place."}],[{"start":472.69999999999993,"text":"On one level, China’s hypercompetition is a macroeconomic story about overcapacity. But it’s also a personal phenomenon. The trainers come from all over China, migrating to Beijing in search of better wages. They join the millions of migrant workers who keep the restaurants, spas and gyms running while sending money home to pay bills for young children or ageing parents. Almost everyone I encounter in the service sector — except a minority of the city’s famously irritable taxi drivers — is here out of economic necessity, counting the days until they can return home. They complain about the city’s punishing rents, stale produce shipped in from outside provinces and polluted air."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":513.9,"text":"I’d first thought of the gym purely as an extension of China’s neijuan culture, a place where trainers’ bodies are reduced to a set of numbers for a leaderboard and where the clientele felt equally isolated. Most people exercise alone, headphones in, eyes fixed on phones. Yet the more time I spent there, the more I noticed pockets of community that defied this impression. In a gruelling work culture where bosses expect employees to sacrifice their free time for their companies, looking after your body feels like a small act of defiance. "}],[{"start":549.8,"text":"Each week, an army of colourfully clad hip-hop dancers collapses out of the studio, sweaty, high on endorphins and laughing. Sometimes I join the ranks of the more sombre yoga devotees who linger behind after classes to catch up on travel plans and their kids’ academic successes. A group of older gentlemen, either retired or senior enough to delegate work, come for a weights workout daily between 10am and midday, the lull period between the morning and lunchtime rush of office workers. They laugh conspiratorially between weight sets, swapping stock tips and talking about property prices while ambling on the treadmills, always waving at me from across the room. "}],[{"start":592.3,"text":"Beijing is not a city that invites interactions with strangers. It has all the features common in busy capitals with bustling crowds of people commuting unreasonably long distances. Much of it is imposing and impersonal. Vast government compounds loom over six-lane concrete arteries that carve through the city, so congested during rush hour that a 4km drive can take an hour. Combined with the harsh climate — often either too hot, too cold or too polluted to comfortably spend extended periods outdoors — the city can feel unusually atomised and lonely compared with other parts of China, where it is more common to see people on the streets dancing or playing cards. "}],[{"start":633.55,"text":"In the past few years, the rapid digitisation of daily life has pushed people further into their urban isolation, eliminating any need to interact with the other 22 million people in the city. Ordering from waiters has been replaced with online menus, while legions of harried delivery workers shuttle meals and packages to front doors — a process that has made consumption frictionless, but also drained life from many shopping malls. “You can live in the same apartment building as your neighbour for years and never exchange a single word with them,” says Will. Coming to the gym was different, he said. “We want it to feel like home.” "}],[{"start":669.9499999999999,"text":"Allowing for a little marketing hyperbole, his message resonated. I joined just as a place to work out indoors, to avoid the city’s pollution and build muscle. Today, I find myself returning for the unexpected pleasure of seeing the same strangers often enough that they no longer feel like strangers at all. As I leave Oxygym, Will waves me goodbye. “You’re looking strong!” he laughs as the doors close, and I am reabsorbed into the city’s streets, busy with people hustling to get ahead."}],[{"start":700.5999999999999,"text":"Eleanor Olcott is the FT’s China tech correspondent"}],[{"start":704.8499999999999,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":719.5,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781367749_7889.mp3"}