From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   How Bad Is China’s Economy? Millions of Young People Are Unemployed and   
   Disillusioned   
   By Brian Spegele, July 26, 2023, WSJ   
   HEFEI, China—More than one in five young people in China are jobless. The   
   government casts much of the blame on the job seekers themselves, insisting   
   that their expectations have gotten too high.   
      
   Young people need to stiffen their spines and embrace hardship, says leader Xi   
   Jinping, who labored in the countryside in China’s Cultural Revolution. If   
   they can’t find jobs they want, they should work on factory lines or engage   
   in poverty relief in    
   rural China.   
      
   The government’s guidance is ringing hollow with many young people. Growing   
   up in a period of rising prosperity, they were told that China was strong, the   
   West was declining and endless opportunities awaited them. Now, with the urban   
   youth unemployment    
   rate hitting a record of 21.3% in June, their employment frustrations are   
   posing a new challenge to Xi and his vision for a more powerful China.   
      
   For the estimated 11.6 million college graduates in 2023, having heeded calls   
   by the state to study hard, the prospect of resorting to the physical labor   
   that many of their parents performed is distinctly unappealing.   
      
   China’s State Council Information Office, which handles media inquiries for   
   senior leaders, didn’t respond to a request for comment.   
      
   In the city of Hefei, a hub of universities 250 miles west of Shanghai,   
   23-year-old Liu Xingyu chafes at the criticism by older people that Chinese   
   youths are too picky.   
      
   “They’re not from our generation, and they don’t understand us, so their   
   opinions don’t matter much to us,” said Liu, who recently quit her first   
   job out of college a few months after starting and joined the ranks of   
   China’s young unemployed.   
      
   Liu studied communications engineering at college because she saw it as a   
   practical choice that would help her secure steady work. As graduation neared,   
   the best she could find was a cellphone sales management training program at a   
   shopping mall, earning    
   the equivalent of $630 a month, about half the city’s average income. When   
   the company later offered her a full-time gig, she said, it wanted to cut her   
   base salary by more than half, prompting her to quit.   
      
   The problem isn’t that jobs don’t exist in China. They do. With its   
   shrinking population, China needs workers as much as ever. It is that   
   China’s weakened economy isn’t producing enough of the high-skill,   
   high-wage jobs that many college students    
   have come to expect.   
      
   This is especially so after Xi’s targeting of the private sector in recent   
   years with regulatory crackdowns on technology and other companies.   
      
   Disenchanted, many young people are opting out of the job market entirely, or   
   “lying flat,” as many of them call it. Chinese media has recently featured   
   articles about young “drifters” who live hand-to-mouth and pick up odd   
   jobs as they roam the    
   country.   
      
   Many of those who still want to work have soured on the private sector, with   
   surging numbers of people sitting for the country’s civil-service exam for a   
   chance at a low-paid, but stable, role in China’s bureaucracy.   
      
   The true level of China’s unemployment rate for young people ages 16 to 24   
   may be even higher than indicated by official data. Zhang Dandan, a Peking   
   University economist, estimated the real youth unemployment rate in March   
   could have reached 46.5%,    
   compared with the official figure that month of less than 20%, if the millions   
   of people who aren’t participating in the workforce also were counted.   
      
   For now, the mood among the young unemployed is more apathy than anger,   
   especially with many parents pitching in to cover their living costs.   
      
   Longer term, the risk is that millions of unemployed people will lose the   
   ambition China needs to achieve Xi’s goal of rejuvenating the country as a   
   great power, and will struggle on the fringes of society as potential threats   
   to the Communist Party.   
      
   Without stable work, many Chinese are putting off getting married and having   
   children, worsening the country’s demographic problems. Some scholars warn   
   about the emergence of a class of “new poor” in China who live off their   
   parents, and could    
   destabilize society.   
      
   “Because the ‘new poor’ have long been living in exclusion, oblivion and   
   boredom, their main mental states have become irritable, antisocial and   
   violent,” said Sun Feng, a Tsinghua University sociologist, in a recent   
   commentary on a prominent    
   party website. “These will be the primary factors that breed social   
   instability.”   
      
   Asked recently about the joblessness of young people, China’s Minister of   
   Education Huai Jinpeng said Xi attached considerable importance to the issue   
   of unemployment. Huai said that conceptions of work were changing in China,   
   with some young people    
   seeking more flexibility.   
      
   “But at the same time, we prefer a more positive view of employment,   
   understanding society, dedicating youth and creating value through practice   
   and employment,” he said.   
      
   While Xi retains widespread popular support in China, some young people’s   
   frustrations about his tight control on society and the economy burst into the   
   open last November when street protests over the country’s Covid policies   
   erupted in Beijing,    
   Shanghai and other cities.    
      
   Job-market anxiety was evident in Hefei last week, where thousands of   
   graduates flooded into a jobs fair organized by the local government.   
   Companies advertised sought-after office roles such as in graphic design or   
   account management. Images of Xi    
   mingling with students flashed on a large screen overhead.   
      
   With so much competition, companies could be picky.   
      
   “Dude, you might not be the right fit,” the recruiter of a popular local   
   restaurant chain told one young man, who then walked away.   
      
   Across town, a recruitment center that helps job seekers land factory work was   
   practically deserted. Many young college graduates don’t want to work on   
   assembly lines, said Wu You, an employee of the recruitment center, even   
   though such jobs can pay as    
   much as or more than entry-level white-collar ones.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)