The bad news for the young generation in China does not stop: in August, unemployment increased by almost 2 percent compared to the previous month - from 17.1 the percentage to 18.8 percent. At the same time, this indicator is not the highest in recent years - last summer, unemployed Chinese youth were as much as 21 percent.
Why so many young people in China are unemployed
The economic policy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping is to blame for this disaster. China's economy has yet to recover from the end of draconian measures due to Covid-19. But today's situation is not only related to the pandemic: Xi has shifted his focus - to control and loyalty, instead of modernization and efficiency, which the Communist Party has been betting on since the death of Mao.
Meanwhile, graduates, regardless of whether they have a bachelor's or master's degree, do not necessarily need good grades to find a job, but mostly good contacts in the party and in companies. Those who have studied abroad are trying to stay there as long as possible, as the outlook for the Chinese labor market is too bleak. The Communist Party promised the Chinese people prosperity and growth in return for their obedience - but the people no longer believe that promise, and Xi Jinping knows it well.
In May, the Chinese leader declared the fight against youth unemployment as his top priority, but the truth is that the current dire situation is not really at odds with his position - according to him, young people in China have become too soft. Therefore, Si encouraged them to work in agriculture or in the mines, as he himself had done in his time. But those who have invested time and money in their education are not interested in Mao-era recipes.
The head of state took another step - he abolished private lessons and English schools to limit, as he himself explains, the influence of material inequality on development opportunities. And in general, with Xi today it is considered almost indecent to have studied at one of the major American or British universities such as Harvard or Oxford. Young people perceive all this as an attempt to limit their opportunities to work abroad.
Improvement is not in sight
But Xi's ideological intervention in the country's economic development has meanwhile reached such proportions that the Communist Party can no longer ignore it. Therefore, she cautiously warns the population and foreign investors that this year the economy will not grow according to forecasts. One of the reasons for this development is the fact that, meanwhile, Xi Jinping prefers to cooperate with internationally isolated countries such as Iran, North Korea and Russia, instead of the rich democracies to which they still owe much of the investment in China, as well as a large part of imports.
Because of all this, it cannot be expected that the situation for young Chinese will improve significantly. Some of them already call their homeland "West Korea" - because of the total control imposed by Si's apparatus.