"I've lost the lion's share of my income since Beijing called a stop to after-school sports clubs in April," said Wu, a 37-year-old with two daughters. The five-week-long near-shutdown of the Chinese capital under China's stringent COVID-19 measures was eased on Monday.

"We have no spare money even in normal months, so now we feel really under financial pressure," he said.

China is moving to spur spending that was depressed by COVID-19 curbs in some of its biggest cities, but piecemeal measures such as vouchers, subsidies for car buyers and digital yuan payments have been modest compared with other big global economies. Policymakers have instead stuck to their preferred approach to stimulus, which focuses on businesses and infrastructure.

Those measures, analysts said, will not be enough to drive a recovery in consumer spending, which accounted for more than two-thirds of first-quarter growth in China's economy, as it rebalances away from a heavy dependence on exports and investments. That will, in turn, impede the strength of recovery in the world's second-largest economy, a crucial engine of global growth.

"Consumers are rattled," said Mark Tanner, managing director at Shanghai-based research and marketing consultancy China Skinny.

"They are lacking confidence that they had before, partly due to the uncertainty around the highly transmissible Omicron being contained for long, but also as they are not feeling as good relative to other countries," he said.

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