A couple of days ago, I opened Xiaohongshu — China’s answer to Instagram, except more aspirational and with significantly less brunch, or at least that’s been my algorithm — and saw something I could not unsee.
Thousands of young Chinese women had replaced their profile pictures with the face of Kris Jenner.
Not Kylie. Not Kim. Not even Kendall, who is technically a supermodel. The mom. The 69-year-old “momager” whose primary cultural contribution, at least in China, among the still tiny percentage of people who have heard of her—sorry Kris—until now, was managing her daughter’s sex tapes into a billion-dollar empire and popularizing the phrase “you’re doing amazing, sweetie.”
They weren’t mocking her. They weren’t ironic hipsters engaging in detached postmodern play. They were, as far as I could tell, praying to her.
“Manifesting nine-figure net worth,” one caption read, next to a professionally photoshopped image of Jenner in a blazer and reading glasses.
“Lawyer Kris, please get me the offer,” said another, featuring Jenner’s face on a suited body in front of a bookcase.
Someone else claimed they changed their phone wallpaper to Jenner and “received 1,000 yuan within an hour.”
The hashtag #KrisJenner has since accumulated 52.9 million views on Xiaohongshu alone. There are over 99,000 posts. An estimated 30,000 people — almost all of them young women — have joined what can only be described as a digital prayer circle. [1]
And Kris Jenner herself, apparently aware of her new role as a Chinese internet deity, commented on a TikTok video explaining the trend. Her response: “You’re ALL doing amazing, sweetie!!!!”
Five exclamation points. As if she were blessing her new congregation. As a Chinese who spent an unhealthy amount of time in the U.S., for a moment I felt two previously separated worlds just collided.
But this is not a story about Kris Jenner. It is a story about China’s Gen Z — specifically its young women — at a moment of profound economic uncertainty. If you scroll through TikTok or Instagram right now, you will barely find a trace of it (yet). This is not a global meme that leaked into China. It is a distinctly Chinese phenomenon, born on Xiaohongshu, shaped by Chinese platforms, and driven by Chinese anxieties.
Specifically, it’s a story about a generation of young Chinese women, whom you’ll learn more about, who are trying to manifest a different future, one phone wallpaper at a time. And by the time you finish reading this, you will understand why they have turned to manifestation, why they chose her as their symbol, and what this bizarre, funny, half-ironic, half-desperate, and wholly human (sometimes AI generated) trend reveals about the state of ambition, anxiety, and aspiration in the world’s second-largest economy.
The Ritual
Let me explain what is actually happening, because if you are not on Chinese social media — and most of you are not — the specifics matter.
Young women on Xiaohongshu, Douyin (China’s TikTok), and Weibo are doing the following:
First, they change their profile picture to Kris Jenner. Not a candid shot. A curated one. Jenner looking powerful. Jenner looking wealthy. Jenner looking like she has never worried about rent in her life.
Second, they set their phone wallpaper to Jenner. Then their iPad wallpaper. Then their laptop wallpaper. Then, for the truly committed, their Apple Watch face. The goal is saturation. Jenner should be the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night.
Third, they photoshop Jenner’s face onto “career cosplay” bodies. Lawyer Kris. Doctor Kris. Engineer Kris. Investment Banking Kris. Teacher Kris. The professions vary, but the message is consistent: Jenner is not just rich — she is competent. She has a job. She is good at it. And she is getting paid.
Fourth, they write captions in the language of “manifestation” — a Western import that has merged with traditional Chinese good-luck practices. “Maintain nine-figure wealth.” “Effortlessly land the offer.” “Get the raise.”
Finally, they wait. But not passively. Manifestation, as practiced on Xiaohongshu, requires active visualization. You must act as if you have already succeeded. You must claim the outcome before it arrives. The profile picture is not a prayer request. It is a declaration.
The genius of the format — and this is crucial for understanding why it has spread so quickly — is that it is protected both ways.
If the manifestation works? “The Jenner effect is real. Try it yourself.”
If it doesn’t? “I was just playing along. It’s just a meme. Don’t take it so seriously.”
You cannot lose. And in an economy where losing feels increasingly likely, that is a very appealing bet.
The Anxiety
You may have heard that China’s youth unemployment rate is improving.
In February 2026, official figures showed 16.1% for ages 16-24 (excluding students). That is down from its peak of 21.3% in June 2023. The headlines, if you saw them, probably sounded mildly optimistic. [2]
But “down from its peak” is not the same as “good.” Before the pandemic, this number rarely touched double digits. And the raw percentage tells only part of the story.
Here is the rest of it.
The class of 2026 will produce an estimated 12.7 million college graduates. That is an increase of 480,000 from 2025. [3] A new record. Every year, the number of young people entering the job market grows. Every year, the competition intensifies. And every year, the gap between expectation and reality widens.
I spent a couple of hours reading through Chinese social media comments — not the think pieces, but the raw, unfiltered voices of young women talking to each other. Here is what they are saying:
“It’s not that I can’t find a job. It’s that I can’t find a job that makes the years of studying feel worth it.”
“My parents had one job for life. I’ve had three jobs in two years. And none of them felt like a career.”
“I used to believe in hard work. Now I believe in luck. And if luck isn’t enough, I’ll try manifestation.”
These are not the words of a generation that has given up. They are the words of a generation that is exhausted, anxious, and still desperately hoping for something better.
Which brings us to the question many Westerners always ask about China’s Gen Z: What about “lying flat”?
The Misunderstood Generation
If you have read any Western coverage of China’s young people over the past few years, you have probably encountered “lying flat” (躺平, tang ping). The Western interpretation has been consistent — and mostly wrong.
The telling goes something like this: China’s young people are so exhausted by the pressure to succeed, so disillusioned by the lack of opportunities, that they are simply giving up. Dropping out of the rat race. Refusing to participate. A generation in retreat—in other word, “lying flat.”
This is… not it.
“Lying flat” emerged as a rejection of involution (内卷, nei juan) — a term borrowed from an agricultural anthropology study describing how farmers, faced with limited land, would work harder and harder for diminishing returns. In the Chinese context, involution describes the brutal, zero-sum competition for scarce rewards. Longer hours. More degrees. More exams. All just to stay in place.
“Lying flat” was never about giving up on ambition. It was about rejecting a particular form of ambition — the kind that demands you destroy yourself in exchange for no guaranteed outcome.
As one young Chinese woman put it on Xiaohongshu: “I’m not refusing to work. I’m refusing to work myself to death for a promotion that might not come, in a company that might lay me off next month.”
Another: “Lying flat doesn’t mean I don’t want a good life. It means I’ve stopped believing that working 80 hours a week will get me one.” (80 hours is just too much, as a biglaw refugee, I get it.)
What Western coverage has consistently failed to understand is that “lying flat” was always a tactical withdrawal, not a strategic surrender. It was a way to preserve energy, sanity, and hope for a different kind of pursuit. It said: I will not kill myself for this particular race. But I still want to win something.
The Kris Jenner phenomenon is what happens when that “something” finds its symbol.
If “lying flat” was about saying “no” — no to the 996 work schedule, no to the endless competition, no to the promise that hard work will be rewarded — then the Kris Jenner phenomenon is about saying “yes” to something else.
Yes to wealth. Yes to control. Yes to the fantasy of turning your life into a machine that generates money without destroying your soul.
This is not a contradiction. It is an evolution.
Why Her?
The question that demands an answer — the one that has puzzled every journalist who has stumbled across this trend, Chinese or American — is: Why Kris Jenner?
Why not a Chinese celebrity? Why not a tech billionaire? Why not a politician, a philosopher, a fictional character?
The answer tells you more about China than about Jenner.
Reason One: She is insanely rich, and she never apologizes for it.
The most common manifestation goal cited across Xiaohongshu is “maintain nine-figure net worth.” Not “be happy.” Not “find meaning.” Nine figures.
Jenner’s actual net worth — estimated by Forbes at over $170 million [4] — is not a side detail. It is the point. She represents wealth without apology, wealth without guilt, wealth without the need to justify it as “meaningful” or “spiritual.”
In a society where public discussion of wealth has historically been muted — and where overt displays of wealth by public officials or employees at state-owned enterprises can trigger anti-corruption investigations — young Chinese women are using a foreign celebrity to express a desire they feel less comfortable expressing directly. Jenner is a safe proxy for “I want to be rich.” A phrase that, spoken aloud in a Chinese context, is crass, uncomfortable, and just… uncool, in many circles.
Reason Two: She projects total, unshakeable confidence.
Jenner’s public persona is not introspective, anxious, or self-doubting. She performs certainty the way other people perform breathing. She has never, in her entire public life, seemed unsure of herself.
Chinese educational and professional culture is famously high-pressure and criticism-heavy. Young people are constantly evaluated, ranked, and often found wanting. The exam system. The performance reviews. The endless comparisons. Jenner’s unapologetic confidence — her refusal to perform self-doubt — is a fantasy escape from a culture that demands humility and punishes visible ambition, especially in women.
Reason Three: She has a seemingly happy, functional family — and she turned it into a business.
In a society where family expectations are intense — filial piety, parental pressure, marriage anxiety, the expectation that daughters will care for aging parents — Jenner offers a different model.
She did not sacrifice family for career. She turned family into the career. Her children are her “products.” The line between personal and professional does not exist. She is not a working mother who has to “balance” anything. She is a mother whose work is mothering, monetized.
The pressure on young Chinese women is uniquely intense. They are expected to be filial daughters, devoted wives, self-sacrificing mothers, and successful professionals — often simultaneously. The state, desperate to raise the collapsing birth rate, is begging them to have more children. But the structural supports for working mothers — affordable childcare, flexible work, shared parental leave — remain inadequate.
Jenner represents a fantasy resolution: a woman who never had to choose. A woman who turned the demands of family into the engine of her wealth. This is not a realistic model. But it is a revealing fantasy.
Reason Four: She is good at what she does.
This is not just “hard work.” It is competence — the ability to execute, to build systems, to turn chaos into profit. Jenner’s 10% commission model (she takes a cut of all her children’s earnings) is a perfect symbol: she doesn’t just work hard; she works smart. She has built a machine that generates wealth regardless of which daughter is famous this quarter.
The most common caption on Kris Jenner manifestation posts is some variation of “maintain nine-figure net worth.” Not “receive nine figures.” Not “inherit nine figures.” Maintain. The implication is subtle but important: she already has it, and she keeps it through her own effort.
This is not an accident.
In China, not all wealth is equal. There is a deeply ingrained hierarchy of how money is perceived:
Inherited wealth is viewed with suspicion. It suggests privilege, not merit. It is unearned. The children of the wealthy are often dismissed as “富二代” (second-generation rich) — a term that carries mockery, not respect.
Ill-gotten wealth is dangerous. Corruption scandals are routine. The state periodically purges officials and businesspeople whose wealth comes in criminal ways. Even the appearance of impropriety can destroy a career.
Earned wealth — wealth that comes from visible, verifiable, hard work — is different. It carries moral legitimacy. It is deserved.
Jenner fits squarely into the third category. She is not an heiress. She was not born rich. She built her empire from the raw materials of her life — her family, her image, her relentless self-promotion. And she has never hidden how she did it.
This is what the 10% commission symbolizes. She doesn’t just work hard; she works smart. But more importantly, she works visibly. Her labor is legible. You can see the hustle. You can track the results. There is no mystery, no hidden source of wealth, no unearned privilege.
There is a reason why young Chinese women are not manifesting Paris Hilton, even though she’s probably more famous than Kris Jenner in China(?). They are manifesting Kris Jenner: the woman who built it herself, in plain sight, and never apologized for it.
The validation is not just about having money. It is about deserving it.
Reason Five: She is a woman. And it feels good to be a woman like Kris Jenner.
This is the most important reason, and the one most Western coverage has missed entirely.
A review of the posts reveals that nearly all participants are women. The career cosplay — Lawyer Kris, Doctor Kris, Engineer Kris — is performed by women, for women. The manifestation posts are written in a female-coded voice.
This is not incidental. It is the whole point.
Young Chinese women are facing a specific set of pressures that young men are not. The marriage market. The biological clock. The expectation that they will sacrifice career for family — or, if they choose career, that they will be judged as “unfeminine.”
Direct ambition — “I want to be powerful,” “I want to be the boss,” “I want to be the one in charge” — is still coded, in many contexts, as unfeminine. Women who say these things openly are called aggressive, cold, calculating. This is, of course, not a Chinese phenomenon, as these insults are familiar to any woman anywhere in the world. But in China, they carry additional weight from Confucian traditions that value female modesty, restraint, and deference.
Jenner offers a different model.
She is not modest. She is not restrained. She is not deferential. She is loud, ambitious, and unapologetically dominant. And she is also a mother, a grandmother, a woman who has never pretended to be anything other than what she is: a person who loves her family dearly, is loved by them in return, but also wants power and will do what it takes to get it.
The participants are not just drawn to Jenner because she is rich. They are drawn to her because she is a rich woman who has not been forced to choose between ambition and femininity. She did not become quiet to be liked. She did not downplay her success to make others comfortable. She did not apologize.
We can argue if this is something young Chinese women can do directly, but I think it’s safe to say there is most likely a social cost for doing that that’s different from their male counterpart.
But they can do it through Jenner.
They can change their profile picture to her face. They can caption it “manifesting nine-figure net worth.” They can tell themselves it’s just a joke, just a meme, just a silly internet trend.
And in doing so, they can briefly inhabit a version of themselves that does not apologize.
And that, more than the specific number of zeros in her bank account, is why they are praying to her.
The Shift
To understand how we got here, it helps to look at where China’s Gen Z was just a few years ago.
The Western narrative has been stuck on “lying flat” for years — presenting it as evidence that China’s young people are defeated, passive, and resigned. The Kris Jenner trend suggests something different: they are not defeated. They are adapting.
When the old paths close, you find new paths. Even if those new paths look, to an outsider, like magical thinking. Even if they involve praying to a 69-year-old American reality TV momager.
The Kris Jenner phenomenon does not replace “lying flat.” It exists alongside it. Some young people are still lying flat. Others are manifesting. Many are doing both, depending on the day, depending on the mood, depending on whether they have the energy to hope.
This is not a generation in retreat. It is a generation trying to figure out, in real time, what success means when the old definitions no longer work.
The Concern
So. Is this harmless?
Part of me wants to say yes, full stop.
This is a coping mechanism. Young women are facing real economic pressure — the job market is competitive, the old promises feel shaky, the future is uncertain. If changing their phone wallpaper to Kris Jenner helps them feel a little more in control — helps them send out one more job application, study for one more exam, get through one more day — that is not a crisis. That is just being human.
The half-ironic framing is actually healthy. It creates distance. It says: I know this is ridiculous. I’m doing it anyway, because it helps. That is not delusion. That is adaptive coping.
But.
It is also worth paying attention to.
A generation that turns to manifestation — that supplements “work hard” with “visualize wealth” — is a generation that has lost some faith in the old formula. They are not wrong to question it. The formula has changed. The economy is still strong — 5% growth, 16.1% youth unemployment (down from 21.3%), 12.7 million new graduates entering the workforce — but the path from “study hard” to “buy a house” is no longer a straight line. It curves. It takes longer. It requires more creativity.
The Kris Jenner trend is not a rejection of hard work. It is an acknowledgment that hard work alone is no longer enough. You need something else. Luck. Strategy. Mindset. A little bit of magic.
After decades of fearmongering, we know now that China’s economy is not collapsing. It is maturing.
Growth has slowed from double digits to 5%, but 5% of a much larger economy is still enormous. The old days of (almost) guaranteed jobs are gone, but they have been replaced by something more complex: more choices, more risks, more uncertainty.
Young people are adapting. “Lying flat” was one adaptation — a tactical retreat from a system that demanded too much. The Kris Jenner trend is another adaptation — a tactical advance toward a different kind of success. Not better, not worse. Just different.
The Kris Jenner trend is small. It is silly. It is half-ironic. It is also, in its own way, a sign of resilience. These young women have not given up. They are trying something new.
Will it work? Probably not in the way they imagine. Manifestation does not actually deliver nine-figure net worth. But the act of trying — of visualizing, of claiming, of refusing to accept that the old paths are the only paths — might lead somewhere real. A new job. A new skill. A new network. A new sense of what is possible.
The question for China’s future is not whether young women will keep changing their phone wallpapers. It is whether the economy will continue to create enough real opportunities to match their real aspirations, and China was, is, and will remain a country full of young people full of aspirations.
So far, the signs are mixed but not hopeless. Employment is improving. New industries are growing. The government is paying attention.
And if the opportunities do not come fast enough? These young women have already shown they are creative. They will find another way. They’ll be fine.
Appendix Bibliography
[1] Business Insider, cited in “Kris Jenner goes viral as China’s new money goddess,” Sina, April 1, 2026. https://k.sina.com.cn/article_2243807243_85bdc80b04001gouo.html
[2] National Bureau of Statistics of China, via CEIC Data, February 2026. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/surveyed-unemployment
[3] Ministry of Education of China, announcement of November 21, 2025, reported by Xinhua News Agency. http://www.china.org.cn/2025-11/21/content_118188120.shtml
[4] Forbes, as cited in “Kris Kardashian Net Worth (Updated 2026),” Cine Net Worth, 2026. https://www.cinenetworth.com/kris-kardashian-net-worth/#3_Is_Kris_Jenner_a_billionaire
Editor: Yunpeng Zhang
