China: the crisis
facing the youth today
and the struggle for
the future
Kazimich20 September 2023
Image: own work
Share
Tweet
Recent figures have shown youth unemployment in
China now stands at over 20 percent – double its prepandemic level. When young people in China look
around, we see a world filled with turmoil, suffering,
and injustice. In our daily lives, we often feel immense
tension, pressure, anxiety and pain. Young people
might well ask ourselves: what has happened to our
world? How did this happen? And most important of
all: what must we do about it?
[The following article was originally published
here in Chinese, and has been edited and
abridged for an international audience.]
A national malaise
The past three years of the COVID-19 pandemic have
triggered a far-reaching social crisis in China. For
years, it has been clear that the decades-long boom in
China has been running out of steam. The warning
lights have been flashing as economic expansion has
slowed, but the pandemic crystalised everything. The
social crisis that has come in its wake has brought
enormous suffering to the working class and youth,
as we have previously reported:
“The Chinese working class has suffered deeply from the harsh lockdown
measures that the state imposed in its futile effort to maintain ‘zero
COVID’. Millions of people’s daily lives are disrupted by constant orders
to do PCR tests, while those unfortunate enough to contract the virus
(and their neighbours) are subjected to poorly-administered quarantine
centres. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs or have been furloughed,
and food prices have skyrocketed in quarantine zones. Many who have
been ordered to stay at home cannot properly access daily necessities.”
The pandemic exposed the ugliest aspects of Chinese
capitalism that had been well hidden in the past.
Instead of patiently listening to public grievances and
scientifically adjusting policies, the CCP regime used
massive lies and authoritarian rule to maintain its
power.
In the face this, the prevailing mood among a section
of the youth has been towards escapism, commonly
known as “run-xue” (润学). In 2022, many media
outlets noted that whilst authorities were
strengthening their efforts to enforce compliance with
their ‘zero COVID’ policies on the helpless masses,
interest in emigration was dramatically surging across
the population.
During the Shanghai lockdown of April 2022, online
searches related to “conditions for emigration to
Canada” spiked by 2,846 percent compared with the
previous period. After the official announcement on 3
April 2022 that China would “strictly adhere to the
‘zero COVID’ policy on the social front,” the overall
search index for emigration rose that day by 440
percent, and video-related searches increased by 1,455
percent.
More important and noteworthy have been the many
forms of resistance with which the Chinese youth have
reacted to the crisis. A new generation of young
people, which has never before witnessed a crisis of
this magnitude, is awakening from political confusion
and apathy. They have gradually come to see the
cruelty of Chinese capitalism and have chosen to
break away from the cynicism that has infected
generations since 1989. In ever-growing numbers,
they have opted to actively participate in social
movements against the regime. In November of last
year, students from at least 21 provinces and 207
universities across the country participated in protest
activities.
Thanks to their struggles, the mobilisations of the
working class, and the hopelessness of containing the
COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government finally
decided to abandon its ‘zero-COVID’ policy. However,
the harm that the authorities caused to the toiling
masses, and the dark side of capitalism that was
exposed by the pandemic, will forever be etched into
the memories of young people, in the eyes of many of
whom, this regime and its system are beyond rescue.
After the pandemic, many people hoped for an
improvement in the economic situation – not least the
officials of the government! However, six months have
passed and the Chinese economy has not only failed to
recover but has continued to slide down the path of
crisis. Manufacturing has been contracting for five
consecutive months now; the real estate industry has
suffered massive losses, deepening the crisis;
investment and exports remain weak, while
consumption is gradually shrinking; and domestic
GDP growth continues its years-long slowdown. (For
more analysis on the economic crisis, click here.)
Amidst this adverse economic background, young
people see no hope of finding meaningful
employment.
Hope for employment fades away
A new generation of young people is awakening from political confusion and
apathy / Image: Marie Anna Lee
In March of this year, Kong Yiji – a “poor, destitute
intellectual” who is a classic character from Chinese
literature, first making an appearance in New
Youth magazine in 1919 – once again became a hot
topic on the Chinese internet. Many have
appropriated this character to describe how difficult
highly-educated Chinese youth are finding it to secure
a decent job amidst a shrinking labour market. They
are forced to give up their self-esteem as intellectuals
and abandon their aspirations for white-collar jobs. In
order to make a living, they are compelled to enter
lower-level positions and industries where their skills
are useless. “Kong Yiji’s long gown” briefly trended as
the number one topic on Weibo, indicating the way
this has gone viral among young people facing a life of
exploitation and oppression in work.
The CCP authorities wasted no time in chastising the
youth, who were told to stop complaining and get back
to work to enrich the bosses. On 16 March, State
media channel CCTV published an article stating that
talk of “[Kong Yiji’s] long gown… is mere selfdenigration”, and it urged the youth not to regard
different jobs in a “hierarchical” manner. Instead, it
preached that they ought to be prepared to swallow
their egos and dare to be more self-reliant. The
implication is that young people shouldn’t point the
finger of blame at the extremely harsh working
conditions in the Chinese job market: the high work
intensity, long hours, low wages, and almost complete
non-compliance with labour laws. Instead, they
should blame themselves for being “spoiled” and for
failing to work hard enough.
For decades, Chinese students have had the
expectation that they would find good jobs after
attending university. They endured tremendous
pressure, competing with millions of others to get into
university. Now, many are finding upon entering
society that their income bears no proportion to the
effort exerted to get these qualifications. Jobs that
align with the abilities of a highly-skilled workforce
have become harder to find. If after twelve years, they
cannot find suitable work and must instead “screw
bolts” for a living, then what was all the effort for? The
empty words of the official media cannot salve these
feelings. And young people have and will make their
voices heard.
On 25 March, a poor and destitute internet singer,
inspired by the popular song “阳光开朗⼤男孩” (Sunny
And Cheerful Big Boy), released a song called “阳光开
朗孔⼄⼰” (Sunny and Cheerful Kong Yiji) on Bilibili.
The video mocks the government's hypocritical
nonsense, and has garnered millions of views, likes,
favourites, and shares, powerfully expressing the
frustration of young people. Naturally, the authorities
could not tolerate such a ‘trend setter’, and the artist
and their work were subsequently banned.
At the end of the aforementioned CCTV article, the
bureaucratic writer casts a spell on himself, saying,
“the era of Kong Yiji is gone, and the aspiring youth of
today will never be trapped.” And the basis for such a
statement? “The economy is recovering, the
employment situation is gradually improving, and the
young generation will have a broader platform and
more diversified opportunities and choices.”
But the figures tell another story. Today, as China
continues to slide into recession, youth
unemployment is rising. According to official
statistics, the youth unemployment rate in China’s
cities and towns has risen month by month this year,
from 17 percent in January to 21 percent in July,
meaning that more than one in five young people is
unemployed.
But that is the calculation on the basis of
the official statistics, which are extremely haphazard
and muddled (for instance, one hour of work per week
is considered “employment”!) The actual
unemployment rate is therefore far in excess of these
figures. An economist at Peking University added
young people having difficulty finding jobs to the data,
and, with the aid of the publicly available urban
unemployment rates, calculated that the actual
number of young people unable to find a job was
already as high as 46.5 percent back in March this
year.
Struggling to find suitable work, young people are
looking at every possible avenue. Applications for the
civil service and postgraduate studies have become
increasingly popular. Millions of young people vie
with one another to find a secure job in government
agencies and on university campuses, despite the
extremely difficult exams involved – only about 1
percent of the 2 million or so applicants were accepted
into the civil service nationally in 2022. The
acceptance rate at the provincial level for 2021 only
rose to 2 percent for the 5 million applicants. Millions
of candidates will remain unemployed. On the other
hand, many young people have given up their jobs and
have even returned to their parents temporarily,
becoming full-time children relying on family support.
And even while so many cannot find a job, many
companies continue to lay off large numbers of
workers on account of the overall economic downturn
and operational problems. The tech industry is
bearing the brunt of this. The three major internet
giants, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, shed a net 28,000
jobs in 2022; whilst the internet industry laid off up to
10,000 people in the first quarter of 2023, according
to End Media.
Industrial sectors such as the automotive industry are
not immune either. In May, Ford laid off more than
1,300 employees in China. Even in the financial
sector, major layoffs are taking place, and Wall Street
corporations are withdrawing from the Chinese
market.
The trajectory of the Chinese economy shows once
more that unemployment and the anarchy of the
market are intrinsic to capitalism.
No way to make ends meet
Even for those fortunate enough to secure
employment, the nightmare doesn’t end there. Even
those in the civil service or with postgraduate degrees
cannot guarantee that they will make ends meet. In
recent years, many local governments in China have
faced serious financial difficulties, leading to sharp
reductions in the salaries and benefits of public sector
workers in many regions. With the economy expected
to continue its downward trend, public sector workers’
incomes are likely to further decline. And those
pursuing postgraduate studies are often finding
themselves compelled to take on low-paying jobs to
make ends meet.
Postgraduate education is merely a way for many
graduates to postpone unemployment. In major cities,
over 39 percent of job seekers have education
qualifications exceeding the requirements for the
positions they apply for, with the percentage rising to
nearly 70 percent in some places. One striking
example is the Henan China Tobacco Company, which
reports that one-third of its new hires in its factories
hold master’s degrees.
But young people are forced to hold onto these jobs
and to put up with awful conditions. The threat of
unemployment, awful labour practices, and the false
classification of workers as ‘self-employed’ by
employers, thus depriving them of rights to
unemployment benefits, all act to coerce even highlyskilled graduates to cling to these low-skilled jobs.
Then there is the question of the exorbitant cost of
living. Just how high are these living costs? One
indicator is the ratio between housing prices and
income. According to Numbeo, in 2023, China's
middle-income families would need 33 years of
disposable annual income to afford a standard 90square-metre apartment. This sobering reality leaves
young people with virtually no hope of buying a home
from scratch. Many resort to taking out high-interest
loans (China's interest rates typically range from 5-6
percent) to purchase a house.
With astronomical housing prices, achieving family
and career goals appears increasingly elusive for the
youth. In China, traditional marriages often require
certain assets if they are to go smoothly, often in the
form of property. The “China Marriage and Family
Report 2022” reveals that the marriage rate in China
plummeted by 40 percent from 9.9 per thousand in
2013 to 5.8 per thousand in 2022.
Soaring housing prices and other associated living
costs have been significant contributors to this
decline. And consequently, since 2016, birth rates
have also been on a steady decline. Aside from other
societal developments, the rising costs of living and
child-rearing have significantly dampened the
enthusiasm of young people for starting families. This
led last year to China’s first population decline in
decades.
This generation of youth will experience the crisis with particular bitterness
and intensity / Image: Marc van der Chijs, Flickr
The decrease in childbirth rates is greying China’s age
distribution, with the World Health Organization
identifying China as one of the fastest-ageing nations
globally. Changes in the population structure mean
that young people, many of whom are single children,
are increasingly shouldering more responsibilities for
supporting their elderly family members.
The exorbitant cost of living has led to a rapid increase
in household debt. Over the span of a decade, from
2009 to 2020, the proportion of debt to wealth of
Chinese families has surged from 20 percent to 60
percent, placing it among the world’s highest.
Comparatively, the United States and Japan took 40
and 24 years respectively to reach the same rate. This
is all the more remarkable in that China has
traditionally been regarded as a high-savings country.
Due to rising living costs and economic difficulties,
young people and the working class in recent years
have faced tight income constraints, compelling them
to adopt cost-saving measures. This trend includes
following the so-called “Six Commandments”
circulating online, which advise abstaining from
smoking, drinking, ordering takeout, getting married,
having children, and pursuing romantic relationships.
This shift is shown in consumer goods retail sales
figures. In July’s figures, for instance, only essential
items like food, tobacco, alcohol, and medicines are
showing trends towards growth, while consumption of
most other goods is declining. Today, what were once
affordable products and services have become luxury
items that must be carefully budgeted for.
An enraged generation
This is the bleak landscape China’s youth must
navigate under capitalism today – they live in a nation
that has reached a tipping point, sharply declining
after years of growth, and they are feeling battered
and exhausted. Faced with an impending economic
crisis, they are the first to feel its impact. This
generation of youth will experience the crisis with
particular bitterness and intensity.
The young people born between the late 1990s and
early 2000s grew up in a China that was gradually
establishing itself in the capitalist world. In the 2010s,
their childhoods coincided with the rapid expansion of
the market economy and advancing productivity.
Growing up in prosperous times ought perhaps to
have instilled in them an inherently optimistic outlook
on life. But as they have reached adulthood, they’ve
witnessed Chinese capitalism faltering, compounded
by the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. Their dreams have
been shattered, plunging them into despair.
Mass psychological studies reveal widespread
suffering among the youth. The “Chinese National
Mental Health Development Report (2021-2022)”
published in March 2023 by the Chinese Academy of
Sciences Institute of Psychology discovered that young
people face the highest risk of depression among
Chinese adults. The depression rate among the 18-24
age group stands at a staggering 24.1 percent, with the
25-34 age group also reporting a significant rate of
12.3 percent. These figures suggest that over 360
million (a quarter of China's population) young people
aged 18-35 endure significant mental stress, with
approximately one in four at risk of clinical
depression.
It is evident that contemporary Chinese society is
brewing deep resentment, and the youth are both
foremost in experiencing and expressing this
discontent. The forms of its expression have shifted
from online platforms to universities, sparking
numerous tentative struggles. For a head-on clash
with Chinese capitalism to erupt, all that is necessary
is a trigger that will ignite their anger, as
demonstrated by last November’s protests.
As the spectre of economic decline looms, the
exploitation and oppression conducted by China’s
ruling class will continue to be exposed, intensifying
class struggle. A significant portion of the youth will
inevitably seek to clear a path towards the
revolutionary means necessary to overthrow Chinese
capitalism. To achieve this historic task, they must
grasp the theory of social revolution – Marxism – and
develop mature political leadership for the working
class.