This dissertation examines how structural economic change and cultural transformation intersect to shape the lives and values of marginalized youth in post-reform China. Through an ethnographic study of the “Sanhe Gods” – young migrant workers in Shenzhen who reject long-term factory jobs in favor of daily-paid, precarious work – it investigates how China’s slowing growth, demographic transition, and evolving labor regime have altered the moral meaning of work and success.Drawing on ten months of fieldwork at the Longhua Bus Station in Shenzhen and comparative observations in other urban labor markets, the study situates the Sanhe subculture within the broader context of China’s exit from its demographic dividend. As stable manufacturing employment declines and the promise of social mobility wanes, many youth confront a widening gap between educational attainment, labor demand, and life chances. The Sanhe Gods respond to this crisis not through protest but through passive resistance and withdrawal – crafting a precarious lifestyle that minimizes living costs and rejects the dominant ethos of “eating bitterness” (吃苦), the long-standing cultural ideal that hard work and endurance guarantee success. By tracing this refusal across economic, spatial, and cultural dimensions, the dissertation links micro-level survival strategies to macro-level transformations in China’s development trajectory. It shows how the state’s pursuit of growth and efficiency has produced urban margins that warehouse surplus labor while sustaining the illusion of opportunity. The study also situates these dynamics within the broader framework of Human Capital Transition, proposing that the misalignment between rising education levels and shrinking employment opportunities marks a turning point in China’s social reproduction system. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that the Sanhe Gods embody a new moral and social critique emerging from China’s youth precariat. Their practices of withdrawal and refusal illuminate the limits of meritocratic ideology under conditions of structural stagnation and invite a rethinking of labor, value, and dignity in the post-industrial era.