Gloria Lee is desperate to find a job. She graduated with a master’s degree in graphic design in June, and she started looking last fall, hoping to find an entry-level job in a big city in central China with a monthly salary of about $1,000. One of the few offers she got was an internship paying $200 to $300 a month with no benefits.
In two days in May, she messaged more than 200 recruiters, sent out resumes to 32 companies, and scheduled just two interviews. She said she has been reluctant to consider it so far, but she will take any offer, including a sale.
“A decade or so ago, China was prosperous and full of opportunity,” she said in a telephone interview. “Right now, even if I want to work hard for opportunities, I don’t know which direction to turn.”
China’s youth are facing record high unemployment as the country recovers from the pandemic at a rapid pace. They struggle professionally and mentally. But the Communist Party and the country’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, are telling us to stop thinking we’re better than doing manual labor or moving to the countryside. Using colloquialism, which means enduring hardships, Mr. Xi instructed us to learn to “eat bitter things.”
Many young Chinese don’t buy it. They say they worked hard to get a college or graduate degree but faced a shrinking job market, lower salaries and longer working hours. Now the government is telling them to put up with the hardships. But for what?
“Ask us to eat something bitter is a kind of deception, a way of expecting us to give ourselves unconditionally and take on tasks that they themselves are reluctant to do.” said Lee.
People like Lee have been preached to the virtues of suffering by their parents and teachers. Now they are hearing it from their heads of state.
“Innumerable success stories in life prove that choosing to eat bitter foods at a young age is also choosing to be rewarded,” Xi said. Quote In a front-page article in the official People’s Daily on Youth Day in May.
In an article about Mr. Xi’s expectations for the younger generation, the phrase “eating something bitter” was mentioned five times. He also repeatedly exhorted young people to:seek self-inflicted sufferinghe draws on his experience working in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.
“Why would he want young people to give up a peaceful and stable life and instead seek suffering?” independent political commentator Tsai Shengkun wrote on Twitter. directorcalled Mr. Xi’s proposal “a disdainful act against young people.”
“What is the purpose of this?” he asked. “Where is he going to lead the Chinese youth?”
A record 11.6 million college graduates have found employment this year, and one in five young people is unemployed. China’s leaders want to persuade a generation that grew up in near-prosperity to accept a different reality.
Youth unemployment rate is the statistic of the Chinese Communist Party. They believe that lazy young people can threaten the rule of the CCP. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao forced more than 16 million urban youth, including Mr. Xi, to work in rural fields. The return of unemployed young people to the cities after the Cultural Revolution forced the party to embrace self-employment, work outside the framework of the state-planned economy.
Today, party propaganda machines spread stories that young people earn a decent living by means of: deliver a meal, garbage recycling, setting up stalls and fishing and agriculture. This is a form of public gaslighting, a form of public gaslighting in which governments respond to policies that destroy the economy, such as cracking down on the private sector, imposing unnecessarily stringent COVID-19 restrictions, and isolating China’s trading partners. trying to escape responsibility.
Many people suffer mentally. Zhang, a young woman from Shanghai who graduated last year with a master’s degree in urban planning, sent 130 resumes but received no job offers and only a few interviews. Living in her 100-square-foot bedroom in her three-bedroom apartment, she barely lives on less than $700 a month as a part-time tutor.
“When I hit rock bottom, I wished I was a robot,” she said. “I thought if I didn’t have feelings, I wouldn’t feel helpless, helpless, disappointed. I can keep sending resumes.”
But she realized that she shouldn’t be too hard on herself. Her problem is bigger than hers. She disagrees with her dietary bitterness.
“What asks us to endure hardship is to try to shift focus away from poor economic growth and declining job opportunities,” Zhang said. She, like most people interviewed for this column, wanted to be identified only by her family name. Because of safety concerns. Some others prefer to be identified only by their English name.
Party messages are effective for some people. Guo, a data analyst in Shanghai, who has been unemployed since last summer, said he didn’t want to blame the pandemic or the Communist Party for his unemployment. He blames his lack of luck and ability.
He canceled his online game and music subscriptions. To make ends meet, he delivered meals last December and worked 11 to 12 hours a day. Ultimately he earned just over $700 a month. He quit his job because it was too physically demanding.
In other words, it failed to eat bitterness.
Mr. Xi’s instructions to relocate to the countryside are alienating not only from China’s reality, but for young people as well.Last December he Said The authorities “systematically lure university graduates to rural areas.” A few weeks ago on Youth Day, he replied to a letter from a group of agricultural students working in rural areas, praising them for “pursuing their own hardships.”of letterThe article, also published on the front page of the People’s Daily, sparked debate over whether Mr. Xi would launch a Maoist campaign to send urban youth to the countryside.
Such a policy would shatter the Chinese dream of social advancement cherished by many young people and their parents.
Wang, a former advertising executive in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, has been unemployed since December 2021 after the pandemic hit the industry hard. He talked about returning to the village and starting a pig farm, both of his parents being farmers. They vehemently opposed the idea, he said. “They said they spent a lot of money on my education so that I wouldn’t become a farmer,” he said.
Physical labor is neglected in China, a class society. Agriculture ranks even lower because of the large wealth gap between urban and rural areas. “Women wouldn’t want to be my girlfriend if they knew I was delivering food,” Wang said. If he becomes a farmer, it will be even worse on the marriage market.
For some young people, Mr. Xi’s proposals to solve the unemployment problem are clearly backward-looking.
Xi “always talks about the great resurgence of the Chinese nation,” said Stephen, who graduated from a top British university with a master’s degree in interactive design but has yet to find a job. “But isn’t rejuvenation not everyone doing physical labor?” With the rapid development of robots and other technologies, these jobs are easily replaceable, he said. rice field.
Of the 13 Chinese who graduated from his school, five who chose to stay in the West found jobs in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Of the eight who returned to China, only three received job offers. Stephen returned to China earlier this year to be closer to his mother.
After months of fruitless job hunting, he, like nearly all the young workers interviewed for this column, sees no future for himself in China.
“My best escape is to convince my parents to let me flee China,” he said.
