China has a record number of college graduates. That should be a good thing,
Except there aren’t enough white collar jobs for them in the job market.
Could manual labor be the solution?
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
In most countries, being college educated is seen as a good thing.
College graduates usually live longer and healthier lives.
They often make more money, which has a lot of knock-on benefits. Money gives you superpowers,
like controlling the weather. Since with enough cash you can
Make it rain whenever you want. Eat your heart out, Storm from the X-Men.
And studies show the more educated someone is, the less likely they are to commit crime.
Well, street level crime. White collar criminals are very well educated.
In general, though, education is a win-win for individuals and society.
So when China’s college graduation rate reached its highest level yet last year,
that should have been really big news! After all, the government has been
pouring tons of money into higher education to help churn out graduates.
It also encouraged people to go to graduate school to stave off unemployment during the pandemic.
To make it easier, the government ordered universities to admit more master’s students.
Like so many Chinese government policies, this just kicked the unemployment can down the road.
But in the short term, it worked. Maybe a little too well.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
“the number of university graduates was expected to reach 11.6 million in 2023 – a record high.”
And on top of that, there are now more postgrads
than there are undergraduates this year, and not just in Beijing.
But the reason you won’t find a lot of headlines about the record numbers of
college graduates is because it was overshadowed by an even bigger story—China’s failing economy.
All those college grads entered a record bad job market last year.
As someone who graduated college in America around 2008, all I have to say is,
“First time?”
At the same time, China was still hammering its economy with its zero covid battering ram.
And that was on top of a massive real estate crisis, inflation,
government crackdowns on the private sector, and an already slowing economy.
Not the best time to be a job seeker. Especially if your main qualification is a diploma.
The government may think it wants more highly educated workers,
but that’s not necessarily what the market wants.
In fact, what the market really wanted was “people that have technically oriented qualifications,
rather than only general academic degrees”.
Now, you can see by this red line that 16 to 24-year-olds already
had a high unemployment rate. But last July it reached a record 19.9%.
That’s compared to around 5% for the rest of the population.
Of course, that’s assuming China’s labor data is accurate, which is always questionable.
I wouldn’t even trust China if they said there are seven continents. If they said that,
I’d be like, “Welp, there must be an eighth one, and they’re hiding it somewhere!”
But even if the numbers are fudged, the fact that the Chinese Communist
Party says it’s bad means that it’s probably really, really bad.
Getting China’s youth employment up is now one of the government’s top priorities.
That’s because the party is terrified of young people—specifically unemployed young people.
I’ll explain right after this commercial break.
Welcome back.
The Chinese Communist Party is terrified of young people.
Which makes sense. In general, young people have a lot of energy, strong opinions,
and questionable judgment, the perfect recipe for political action. The last time the party saw a
major political uprising was when college students began calling for democratic reforms in 1989.
The government put an end to the protests by bringing out the military and gunning
them down. Since many of the protesters had gone to Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
it became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
After that, a lot of young people fled the country.
Because while *some* young folks think the party is over once the snacks are gone, *most* think
it’s time to go when the hosts *murder anyone that disagrees with them.* Major party foul, bro.
For the ones who stayed, the Party made a Faustian bargain:
“we’ll let you make money as long as you keep your mouths shut and don’t challenge the government.”
That seemed to work out OK for the government, at least until the pandemic hit.
Then, China’s zero covid policy forced people to stay in their homes for weeks, sometimes months,
on end. The money flow dried up. People ran out of food or couldn’t get medical treatment and died.
Others were sent to Orwellian government-run
quarantine camps that didn’t even have basic amenities.
As I mentioned before, this was on top of an already bad economy.
All put together, the government's side of the bargain began falling apart, so Chinese citizens
abandoned their side. They started defying the lockdowns en masse to come out and protest.
The government lifted the zero covid policy shortly after these widespread protests began.
Of course, the protesters were quietly dealt with as well. The Chinese Communist Party couldn’t have
people thinking that they could protest and actually get away with it, now could they?
But the fact that these protests even happened in the first place shows that desperate people
will take desperate measures—including risking their lives to protest. And the Party knows this.
It’s even worse when those desperate people are young
and have a lot of time on their hands to brood on how desperate they are.
Already, China’s youth have become disillusioned with the communist party.
We’ve covered in previous episodes China’s lie flat movement. The link is below.
Basically, it’s where Chinese who don’t see any future stop trying to get ahead and just lay low.
Of course, the phrase “lying flat” is now heavily censored on the Chinese internet.
So sorry, Chinese fitness influencers . Planking is now a national crime.
Good thing I already have a chiseled eight pack.
So netizens have turned to the fictional main character from the
1918 story Kong Yiji to vent their frustration.
Kong Yiji is an impoverished scholar whose lofty airs are always being
mocked by the commoners at the bar where the story takes place.
Despite being well educated, Kong Yiji is so poor that he’s basically a beggar.
According to the China Digital Times, he’s come to “symbolize the choice faced by today’s
recent college graduates: pursue a white-collar career and risk unemployment or ‘take off their
scholar’s gown’ and work a blue-collar job they had hoped to avoid through education.”
I have to say, you can’t blame them for not wanting China’s blue-collar jobs.
Factory jobs are grueling and don’t pay much. For example, Foxconn,
which makes iPhones for Apple, now pays their workers just under *$3 an hour.*
China’s tech sector pays much better. But it’s known for its crushing workload and a
9-9-6 workweek, where people work from 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week.
For many young people, education promised a way out of these extremes. And like I said earlier,
the Party encouraged people to get degrees. But then it failed to deliver for them.
Man, winding up with a degree you never use? As someone with a
degree in classical music composition, I have no idea what that must be like.
It’s certainly a problem for the Chinese government. Now, the youth
are disillusioned, frustrated, unemployed, and potentially a force to be reckoned with.
But the CCP isn’t handling the situation very constructively.
What else is new? After this final commercial break, I’ll talk about
how the government’s throwing salt on the wounds of the unemployed.
Welcome back.
China’s seeing record-breaking unemployment for 16 to 24-year-olds. And it’s especially
bad for those with degrees because there aren’t enough
white-collar jobs to go around. Young people are disillusioned and angry.
Instead of taking responsibility for the poor economy, though, the state is putting
the blame on college graduates who don’t want to “roll up their sleeves” and do manual labor.
“The Communist Youth League last month criticised young graduates for holding
on to their professional aspirations, accusing them of refusing to ‘tighten
screws in factories’ and exhorting the current generation to ‘take off their suits,
roll up their sleeves and go to the farmland’.”
Yeah, you bourgeois little rightists. Why do you care so much about what job you
have? The government has safety nets in place for you. And by that I mean
suicide netsoutside of Foxconn because the job is so horrible.
This follows a number of glowing reports
in Chinese state media about the virtue of manual labor.
Take this CCTV piece about a porter in Chonqing. As the man carries deliveries around the city,
the narrator talks about the peace of mind that comes with physical work. What the
narrator fails to mention, though, is that these porters only make about $300 to $450 a month,
about half what a college graduate makes at an entry-level job.
Honestly, I’m shocked they’re trying to convince people to do
manual labor instead of just doing what they normally do:
Forcing them to. So… this is progress?
CCTV also posted a WeChat article called “Facing Up to the Anxiety Behind ‘Kong Yiji Literature,”
which pooh-poohed concerns about suffering a similar fate to Kong Yiji.
As you can imagine, this did not go over well with Chinese netizens.
This video about Kong Yiji hit back at the government for ruining the economy, failing
workers, and then ridiculing those who don’t want to take menial jobs. Oh, and the hypocrisy of the
government looking down on workers while it gets fat off corruption. The video got 3 million views
before it was removed and the creator’s account closed down. But of course, we can still show
you the video, because this is the internet. You can’t really remove anything from it.
The internet’s like a cast iron skillet. You don’t clean it. It just gets more and more seasoned.
While it censors criticism on the internet, government propaganda has been loudly proclaiming
that the government has it all under control. It’s trying to roll out incentives for companies
to hire more graduates, things like subsidies, tax cuts, and guaranteed loans for businesses.
It’s also reportedly training graduates to take jobs that are in-demand.
An official from Lanzhou City said that college and university students
there are receiving training in areas like entrepreneurship, e-commerce, and tea ceremonies.
Yes, who didn’t go to college to make dirty leaf water.
State media has dubbed this kind of work “flexible
employment.” Or what here in the US we would call gig work.
Because everyone working in the gig economy knows how profitable
that is. All you Uber drivers with your mansions in the hills.
The Chinese government sees it as a way to give young people an
income — at least temporarily—until they can find a job in their field of study.
But the government doesn’t really care what they do,
as long as they’re gainfully employed and not protesting.
On that note, another brilliant idea from the government is encouraging college graduates to
go work in the countryside, despite usually lower wages and poor infrastructure there.
Hmmm, now where have I heard that before? Oh right, that’s what Maodid
during the Cultural Revolution. He shut down schools and forced the kids to work
in the countryside so that they would get a good proletarian education from the peasants.
I’m sure it will be the same for today’s youth.
And I’m sure forcing everyone into the country will do wonders for filling all
of China’s ghost cities. At this point, they’re gonna become ghost provinces.
There’s a lot riding on this for China.
Besides being a potential source of trouble for the government,
young people are responsible for taking care of the elderly.
Because of China’s one- and then two-child policies, many millennials don’t have siblings.
That means that taking care of both parents and grandparents can fall on a single person.
So the younger generation who just worked hard to graduate college are expected to take low paying,
manual labor jobs out in the country on top of caring for their aging family members, and just…
enjoy it?
Their future’s so bright, they gotta wear night vision goggles .
At the same time, the younger generation is responsible for the next generation—and
so far, it’s not going well. Fewer people are choosing to have kids,
and as a result, China’s population is shrinking.
This shouldn’t be surprising. The last thing a bunch of young
people overburdened by manual labor and aging family members want is children.
But it has knock-on effects for the pension system, because young people
are generally the ones paying into the older generation’s pension funds.
The government recently increased the retirement age to solve this problem,
but like so many government policies, it’s just a bandaid. Eventually China will need new blood
to replace the retirees, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to be happening anytime soon.
It all comes down to this: China’s high youth unemployment rate is a real crisis
for the Party. If young people can’t get a job, they’re more likely to protest. They won’t be
able to financially support their families. And if they can’t financially support their families,
they’re less likely to have kids. And this could even lead to droughts. Because without money,
how can they make it rain?
So what do you think China’s youth should do? Let us know in the comments below.
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including the ability to ask me questions I’ll answer on the show.
Today’s question comes from Logan “These goons ever bother you guys?”
Ah, Logan is asking in response to this episode about the secret
Chinese police station in New York. For the most part, those guys focused
on going after Chinese people living in the US, even if they were legal US residents.
They would do things like make “threats of violence against a
Chinese dissident and the dissident’s family,
in an attempt to force the person to return to China to be arrested by CCP authorities.”
The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t need to do anything like that to me. Our biggest
issue is YouTube suppressing these videos so no one sees them. Ever wonder how a channel
with almost 2 million subscribers only gets about 100 thousand views on each episode?
That’s why support from viewers like you is so essential to China Uncensored’s survival.
So thank you for your question and your support Logan.
And thank you for watching.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.