On a pavement in Sichuan province, a humanoid robot knelt beside a collection bowl and a QR code for digital payments. Its display read: “No money to charge — please pay the electricity bill.” The scene, captured on video and viewed millions of times across Chinese social media, was likely a staged performance by the manufacturer Unitree Robotics, but the reactions it provoked were entirely genuine. Passersby dropped coins; online, users joked that even beggars were being replaced by machines. The robot, a model G1 capable of walking, climbing stairs and maintaining balance, was not asking for alms out of need but out of design — a mirror held up to a society grappling with the implications of its own technological acceleration.

That same week, a young unemployed man in Wuxi, eastern China, placed an order for fried rice on a delivery platform. In the notes field, he wrote: “Please give me more rice. I was recently fired and haven’t received my salary yet. I can only eat one meal per day. Please!” When the meal arrived, the lunchbox lid bore a handwritten message from the restaurant owner: “Come and be an apprentice in my restaurant.” The story, shared by the man on social media, attracted 40 million views and nearly four million likes. Viewed from Beijing, these two episodes — one a calculated corporate stunt, the other an unscripted act of solidarity — sketch the contours of a moment in which economic precarity and demographic anxiety are reshaping the texture of daily life.

Across the globe, the numbers are stark. In Switzerland, the fertility rate has fallen to 1.28 children per woman, the fourth consecutive annual decline. A study by the insurer Swiss Life, based on a survey of 3,200 people, found that more than half of childless adults aged 18 to 45 do not want to start a family. The most common reason, cited by over 50 per cent, was simply the absence of a desire for children; financial strain and the difficulty of reconciling work and family followed. The same study revealed that mothers with young children perform up to 65 hours of unpaid labour per week, while a third of respondents believed a mother should not work full-time for the good of the child. In Italy, the demographic contraction is already redrawing the food industry. Unione Italiana Food, an association representing 530 companies, warns that the country has lost 35.8 per cent of its births since 2008 and could shed 7.7 million working-age people within 25 years. Supermarket shelves are filling with single-portion meals, ready dishes and frozen foods, as manufacturers adapt to a landscape of smaller households and older consumers who shop more frequently but cook less.

India, now the world’s most populous nation, is undergoing a pronatalist turn that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. The southern state of Andhra Pradesh has begun offering cash incentives — 30,000 rupees for a third child, 40,000 for a fourth — as the national fertility rate dips below replacement level. Hindu-nationalist voices urge couples to have at least three children, warning that cultures unable to sustain themselves face extinction. This marks a sharp reversal from the 1970s, when millions of Indians were sterilised, often coercively, under Indira Gandhi’s government. Feminist critics today caution against pressuring women into pregnancy, arguing instead for better work-life balance and internal migration from higher-fertility northern states.

In France, the pressures are industrial rather than demographic, but the same competitive logic applies. Renault plans to cut 800 engineering jobs by 2027 and retrain 2,500 workers, as its chief technology officer acknowledges that Chinese automakers can develop a new model in two years — half the time European manufacturers require. The restructuring is a direct response to the speed and price of Chinese electric vehicles, which have more than tripled their market share in Europe over two years. Back on the streets of Chengdu and Fuzhou, the begging robots continue to appear, their messages — “I have no money to charge” — flickering on displays. Whether they are art, advertisement or provocation, they leave behind a question that lingers long after the coins have stopped falling: in a world of shrinking families and accelerating machines, who, exactly, is asking whom for help?