Wu has staked out his Chinese Dream territory. He’s married, has a second child on the way, has an apartment in Beijing and a car paid for by a tech job with a comfortable salary.

He even jumped the fence of China’s restrictive residency rules to move from eastern Shandong province to the capital near the middle-class Shangdi district.

“Things are going pretty well,” says the newly minted thirty-something with a smile.

Its rise through the bustle of China’s competitive capital has largely followed the lead of President Xi Jinping.

It has been ten years since Xi unveiled the “Chinese Dream,” a grand vision to restore the country’s global influence through a collective struggle for wealth, power and glory — directed by the Communist Party.

Its accomplishments include lifting tens of millions out of poverty into an economy bubbling with technology, manufacturing supply chains and the breathless energy of 1.4 billion people.

This has brought new freedoms and opportunities, alongside unexpected challenges for a party bent on control and self-preservation.

“Everyone has their own ideals, aspirations and dreams,” Xi said in a speech on November 29, 2012, shortly after being appointed party general secretary.

“In my opinion, realizing the great revitalization of the Chinese nation is the greatest Chinese dream.”

But as Xi prepares for the party to anoint him for an unprecedented third term, some say that dream is losing definition.

Even in Shangdi, fear lurks behind the tinsel of prosperity.

Workers are struggling with burnout and the rising costs of housing and childcare, as well as the social pressures of marriage – all in an economy battered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Expectations for the future are changing, with potentially profound implications for China’s direction.

“People are chasing different things than they used to be,” says Anna Chen, 29, who works for another technology company in Shangdi.

Over the past decade, huge office buildings have transformed Shangdi from a nondescript suburb to a landmark on China’s tech map.

The area is near the ruins of the Old Summer Palace – destroyed by British soldiers in 1860 – a reminder of China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western nations that still irks Beijing.

Many of Shangdi’s new residents work for tech giants like Baidu, Kuaishou and Didi Chuxing – companies that dominate daily life in the world’s most populous nation and now outperform many of their Western competitors.

Wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a dark T-shirt and sweatpants, 31-year-old Sheldon Zhang wears the uniform of a generation of young technicians who are among the most educated and cosmopolitan in Chinese history.

Zhang is a fast-talking college dropout who co-founded a startup in his early 20s. Today he’s a user experience architect at a large company, tinkering with robotics and artificial intelligence in a mission he says is for the “future benefit of humanity.”

Nodes like Shangdi are drivers of AI, quantum computers, sensors and chips envisioned in the party’s latest five-year plan as essential to the next phase of China’s development.

However, industry insiders warn that a “winter” has settled in the tech sector.

In a widespread crackdown, Beijing has clamped down on big companies over fears they have too much of an impact on Chinese consumers.

Revenue growth is declining at big-hitters like Alibaba and Tencent, and layoffs are mounting in the industry.

China’s economy grew just 0.4 percent in the second quarter of this year – its worst performance since the pandemic began.

“Without an explosion of new technology, we could start to slow down or fall behind,” says Zhang.

Others are already feeling the pressure.

Li Mengzhen, a 27-year-old strategy specialist at a short-video platform, says the tech community’s grassroots cautiously refer to themselves as “digital workers.”

“Our situation is very similar to that of migrant workers in the 1990s,” she says.

She has a decent salary but fears owning property in Shangdi, where apartments easily sell for 100,000 yuan (US$13,900) per square meter, will forever be beyond her.

“We left our hometown to work in Beijing…but can’t say we’re Beijingers,” says Li.

“Our programmers are like the people who worked on sewing machines or screwed in screws… their jobs are easily replaceable.”

It’s a boredom that’s spreading across much of their generation, with many seeking common solace in a counterculture of “lying flat” — abandoning the endless cycle of work to achieve the impossible goals of urban life.

China’s zero-Covid strategy has slowed growth, making it even harder to get a job and then keep it.

Youth unemployment in urban areas has hit repeated record highs this year, peaking in July when nearly 20 percent of people ages 16 to 24 were unemployed, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

But new urban cultures also offer ladders.

At a café in southern Shangdi, a beaming Feng Jing says she just quit her job at a video sharing platform to become a yoga teacher.

“I’m someone who chases after freedom,” says the 29-year-old.

“I’m not bound by money or other preconceived notions.”

At the district’s Love Park, giggling children chase each other while guarded by stone statues inscribed with communist shibboleths from China’s past.

“Stabilize low birth rates, raise the quality of the newborn population,” reads a memorial to a family planning policy instituted in the late 1970s to slow population growth, limiting many families to having one child.

The government is now encouraging couples to have up to three children in a bid to meet a demographic crisis poised to burden a shrinking, weary young workforce with the costs of paying hundreds of millions of retirees.

It’s perhaps the biggest challenge to the Chinese Dream of all, as it threatens to distort government spending to provide health care and pensions to some 400 million people over 60 by 2040.

If current trends continue, the population is likely to peak by the end of the decade before entering a “sustained” decline, according to the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Such a decline would inflict “extremely adverse social and economic consequences” on the country, the Academy adds.

Steps to spur a baby boom with tax breaks and childcare rebates have so far failed.

“A child is expensive enough,” said one father, who declined to be identified.

Others question the need to marry or have children at all — a radical position in a patriarchal society where the pressure to start a family is high.

Tech employee Anna Chen said she wants to earn just enough to travel the world and support her parents through their old age.

“There are enough people in the world already,” she told AFP, using a pseudonym to avoid backlash from her employer.

“And the way society develops, you can live well without marriage and children.”

In the shade of a luxury apartment block in Beijing, 70-year-old Wang Yufu dozes off in the midday heat.

Wang moved to the city from eastern Jiangsu province around the same time Xi was unfolding his Chinese dream.

Spry and humble, he leads a team of migrant workers beautifying Shangdi’s green spaces and earns around 6,500 yuan (US$917) a month — several times his wages when he arrived.

China’s rapid urbanization over the past four decades has relied on migrant workers.

According to official figures, 290 million rural people currently work in urban areas, many of them in low-paid jobs.

But strict residence regulations and rising costs of living prevent most from settling in the cities they helped build.

When the lunch break was over, Wang persuaded his team to go back to work at a nearby park.

Things are better than they were a decade ago, he said, but big dreams are still for other people.

“People like us could never afford houses here.”