r/China • u/HooverInstitution • 10h ago
经济 | Economy “What’s Up” with Youth Unemployment in China
https://chinaarticles.substack.com/p/whats-up-with-youth-unemployment17
u/NecessaryJudgment5 9h ago
A lot of the young employed people do gig jobs like food delivery.
While the AI sector is doing great in China, investment into AI will do little to alleviate the unemployment problem because there just aren’t many jobs in that field. In some sectors AI will exacerbate unemployment.
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u/Chinksta 10h ago
It's been a known problem since a while ago. What's worse is that my country (if you can even call Hong Kong a country anymore) is used to alleviate this problem by offering them priority for top tier jobs.
As a local, this is just the whole immigrants stealing our jobs meme.
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u/HooverInstitution 10h ago
In his weekly China Articles newsletter, Visiting Fellow Matthew Turpin argues that youth unemployment is a serious problem for officials in China, as the “youth unemployment rate for August 2026 was about 19%.” Contextualizing this figure, Turpin writes, “That is double the youth unemployment rate in the United States and [even here] there is much consternation that young people cannot find jobs given AI and the perceived lack of economic opportunity.” In his view, the youth unemployment situation is likely to have real social and political implications in China, as seems to be the case in France, where the youth jobless figure is similar. A lack of opportunities for Chinese non-STEM students in particular (given preferential government investment in technical versus humanistic fields) may come back to haunt the Communist regime, Turpin says. As he writes, if an authoritarian government alienates “a bunch of extroverted social scientists, artists, lawyers, and journalists, they will organize a political movement against [that regime].”
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u/justice_works 8h ago
I highly doubt the 19% is the real number
Every year millions graduate from Chinese University
How do you create that number of jobs just for the grads?
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u/eliotxyz 6h ago
I can say this. I doubt a local or National CCP officer has ever released an accurate unemployment or GDP number to the public. Or natural disaster deaths, for that matter.
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u/bananas19906 9h ago edited 9h ago
The literal hoover institution is posting anti communist substack articles on the china sub. And people still pretend like reddit is somehow biased towards china this is actually insane. Get this dogshit propaganda out of here are we back in the red scare again?
It has staffed numerous jobs in Washington for Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.[13] It has provided work for people who previously had important government jobs. Notable Hoover fellows and alumni include Nobel Prize laureates Henry Kissinger, Milton Friedman, and Gary Becker; economist Thomas Sowell; scholars Niall Ferguson and Richard Epstein; former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich; and former secretary of defense James N. Mattis. In 2020, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice became the institution's director.
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 7h ago
Does the question about "what's going on with youth unemployment" become less valid though?
The economic difficulties in China regardless great GDP numbers are undeniable. Even in Shanghai I have never seen the market look that dramatic. Where 5 years ago companies would fight for leases, these days prominent shopping malls and area's remain empty for years. Even if you go into malls, very few show much action.
Publicly China still magically shows marginal growth numbers for retail, but as someone in retail I find these numbers hard to believe. In Shanghai it's really, really bad, in lower tiers it's even worse.
The real difficulty is though as mentioned, numbers show everything is doing not to bad, if not just fine. Large Chinese companies like JD and alibaba keep posting fantastic numers which is unusual, because specifically for JD pretty much every category has cratered in revenue and traffic (some area's we see up to a 70% drop year on year which again we have never seen before).
I would also love to better understand besides the final numbers, how they come together. Take youth unemployment it hoovers officially around 20%. But we know there has been a period that it wasn't published and when it got published again there was a sudden drop. When are people considered employed might seem like a simple question, but is that still counted in the same way as 5 years ago? How does it stack up compared to other nations?
And while employed might sound great, how many are way over-educated for the jobs they take on? The other day there was a story of a doctor becoming a delivery driver, I like to believe that's not the norm. But again how many university grads are doing gig work?
China is going through rough times for the past 3-4 years and while I strongly believe that behind the curtains the party is doing their best. Unfortunately in public we don't see much. To get customer confidence back we will need public action and it's needed fast. Otherwise this will be known as the lost decade(s) for China.
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u/narsfweasels 6h ago
Where 5 years ago companies would fight for leases, these days prominent shopping malls and area's remain empty for years. Even if you go into malls, very few show much action.
Seconded - I went to a mall we used to frequent around 2023-2025 post COVID and it was one of the most luxury malls we would visit. The entire first floor was Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Coach, Laboutin etc. We went during the National Holiday and the first floor was about 1/3 empty. Laboutin and Gucci were gone. Replaced with something that looked like a high-end mountain climbing store and a construction frontage. Third floor, where all the food was, was at minimum 1/2 empty, with an entire square side gone.
Global Harbor was the same.
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u/bananas19906 6h ago
The question is valid but its one thats already been asked thousands of times by better sources than a random blog wasting mutiple paragraphs on talking about pop music. The analysis is absolute shit and heavily biased i mean theres a paragraph in it about how the Korean war was a Chinese attack on the UN how ridiculous.
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
The PRC’s engagement in the Korean War was absolutely an attack on the UN, I don’t see any problem with that.
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u/bananas19906 4h ago
Absolutely moronic take considering they only joined when the un was literally on the chinese border and the CPC warned multiple times what would happen if they did.
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
On the Chinese border or in China? Attacking the UN just because the UN troops were close to your border made you squarely a rogue state
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u/bananas19906 4h ago
Right just like what happened to the ussr post revolution with the "exploratory" coalition forces surely they would have just stopped at the border even after multiple warnings that were ignored and after American aircraft literally did cross the border and bombed airfield and railways.
https://www.quora.com/Did-America-bomb-Chinese-territory-during-the-Korean-War
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
Except they were literally UN troops, not some random expeditionary forces. US aircrafts did cross the border occasionally and did some bombings along the river, but this hardly warranted a full-scale invasion from the PRC. A dead giveaway is China didn’t even admit they were in a war with the UN, see no further than the stupid name of PVA.
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u/bananas19906 4h ago
Ok so a coalition of forces who are explicitely against your government ignore multiple warnings not to approach your border then literally start bombing your bases while the general talks about "finishing the job" (with nukes) and china is somehow the aggressor truly genius logic.
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
Just because your issued warnings doesn’t make your warnings any legit. The US did infringe China’s airspace occasionally but the UN ground troops never set foot on the Chinese soil. What China did was disproportionate and 100% warranted a UN embargo
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u/eliotxyz 6h ago
There are but the orgs are not even close to being as sophisticated as Hoover. You really think a bunch of Phd professors and Nobel prize winners would take the time to post anti CCP propaganda on Reddit? Uh no.
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u/bananas19906 6h ago
Not them but the organization to which they are fellows literally just did look at the ops account its official
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
As you’re a tankie, what you said must be unconditionally true I guess
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u/bananas19906 4h ago edited 4h ago
? Ok your a lib we can call eachother names like gradeschoolers all we want the hoover institution is a historically significant right wing think tank with fellows such as kissinger and Newt gingrich the quote i added was from wikipedia.
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
Don’t see any problem with its right wing affiliation
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u/bananas19906 4h ago
Neither do I im just pointing the objective fact that a historical right wing anticommunist think tank is posting shit tier anti china propaganda on the china sub with its official account and people think reddit is somehow biased towards and defending china.
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
Reddit in a whole isn’t biased towards China, but tankies and Chinabots are visibly increasing in number
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u/bananas19906 4h ago
There you go you agree with me then
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u/Educational_Smile131 4h ago
I only partially agree with you, not agree with it’s dogshit propaganda
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u/bananas19906 4h ago
Did you actually read the substack? He spends multiple paragraphs talking about pop music which has no relevance to his point other than the youth are unhappy in both pop music and in china.
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