61–70 of 86 posts
The article mostly focuses on educated youth and white collar jobs (though it does touch on blue collar). But why would they start with an example of someone making less than half the average income of Chinese (about 10000 yuan iirc)? Sure, if you are in the bottom 25% of income, things will look bleak. I am not saying that is not the issue, but the article is not about that topic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education, however, consistently leads to better outcomes. White collar workers are doing well across the country (US). Forget about tech, accountants, HR professionals, economists, risk analysts, project managers, etc. are all doing well. It's predominantly the un- and under-educated that are being left behind.
Unless of course you took out massive student loans for that education and failed to study an employable skill, those silly 18 year olds, not able to understand the shifting labor market and make sensible 30 year predictions on what skills will be desired.
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Young people in the West who are unhappy are mostly mentally ill. It's not the same in China and the article enumerates various concrete reasons why.
I personally know people (20s to mid 30s) who are simply unhappy that they did everything they were told and couldn't get jobs in their field, and can't afford a house (so they rent one and which pays for somebody else's mortgage).
Not only in 2023, in 60s & 80's as well.
Seems like there was/is demand supply mismatch always.
Extra hard for young Chinese people as they can't vent out openly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standards for ‘living wages’ are much lower in China and they have a very poor social safety net. So, objectively they are in a far worse situation. The CCP has long quelled dissent by saying yes things suck but look at fas things are improving. As that breaks down they are in for problems.
Do they have a very poor social safety net? I’m not disagreeing, but I’ve not seen a single homeless person in China on two separate trips lasting a couple months. I was in big cities and in rural areas. It’s only a personal anecdote but just wondering if your claim is actually objectively true?
China is good at controlling public opinions like this. I grew up in a "third line" city and we were always told if we don't have good grades, we end up having to clean the streets. But we were also told there is "social safety" for medicine.
In reality, you need a job and need to pay a monthly fee for "social safety". And in reality, people with low grades can end up in gangs or prison. Only the obedient type can get a hard labor job.
Many of these lucky ones would sleep where they work or stay with families or sleep at "migrant worker hotel/camps". It's not a life anyone would want to live.
In terms of quality of health care, even though all workers pay into "social safety", most cannot be seen by good doctors. For surgeries, they often had to travel to bigger cities and pay out of pocket. And " social safety" mostly covers visits to clinics (baiscally a consultation at a third world version of your Walgreen pharmacy counter).
I know people tend to hate the USA but it's not worse than China.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elaborate?
have you read the article? youth unemployment rate is far higher with many, even in STEM degrees, struggling to get any jobs. social pressure to succeed academically is far higher in China and there is nothing equivalent in the US. 996 culture is an insane concept. censorship in entertainment is pervasive. rampant sexism. its easy to say "oh yea the US has these problems too" but it is 1000x worse in China, and its e…
For one, the CCP's rule and legitimacy are tightly coupled with performance. China has experienced unprecedented economic growth in these past decades, and that makes the citizens more willing to tolerate the annoying (or outright evil) things the CCP does because at least it's helping everyone in aggregate. But now that that growth is slowing, they have to worry that their justification to power is in jeopardy. And because the CCP obviously doesn't run elections or allow any dissident groups, the only way for widespread dissatisfaction with their performance to surface is unrest. Their bungling of the latter half of the pandemic certainly didn't help their case here.
For another, as the article alludes to, it's thought of as impossible for a man to get married without owning a home, and failing to start a family is failing as a human (particularly as the CCP explicitly calls for citizens to have more babies). Skyrocketing home prices compared to stagnant wages are growing the pool of "logistical incels" who have no realistic trajectory to ever being married or starting a family, which was already a grave problem due to lingering sex imbalance from the one child policy. The CCP is deeply concerned with this because large pools of incels tend to grow unstable and even turn to violence, out of desparation.
And for yet another, the extent to which Xi Jiping is able to promulgate and impose his philosophy has no analog in the west. If that philosophy is "you need to stop whining roll up your sleeves and be willing to work long hours in a factory like we did during the Mao era, even if that means your degree is wasted" -- which is a message the CCP is currently pushing, as cited in the article -- that's going to dramatically exacerbate the frustrations the young are already feeling, again even moreso because they have no way to voice their hopelessness. The nihilism compounds.
The Economist does a great job covering China in general, and especially in pointing out the ways that though their challenges and structures may appear superficially similar to Westerners, often the subtleties make them completely different. I'd especially recommend their podcast Drum Tower, if you're into that.
That’s weird. I’ve been hearing for years, nationalist and optimistic sentiment in China being higher among youths than in the US.
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Unless of course you took out massive student loans for that education and failed to study an employable skill, those silly 18 year olds, not able to understand the shifting labor market and make sensible 30 year predictions on what skills will be desired.
It's not a matter of predicting the labor market, it's a matter of understanding debt. There are very few possible job markets where the kind of debt we're talking about makes any kind of sense. What's missing in our high school education is any form of basic financial literacy. It's still unfair to blame the kids (technically, brand-new adults) for the system's failure to teach them, but you don't have to be an orac…
The problem is that the incentives for everyone are broken. Usury has been banned or made into a crime throughout history, why did we legalize it when it comes to student debt?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education, however, consistently leads to better outcomes. White collar workers are doing well across the country (US). Forget about tech, accountants, HR professionals, economists, risk analysts, project managers, etc. are all doing well. It's predominantly the un- and under-educated that are being left behind.
Unless of course you took out massive student loans for that education and failed to study an employable skill, those silly 18 year olds, not able to understand the shifting labor market and make sensible 30 year predictions on what skills will be desired.
The article mostly focuses on educated youth and white collar jobs (though it does touch on blue collar). But why would they start with an example of someone making less than half the average income of Chinese (about 10000 yuan iirc)? Sure, if you are in the bottom 25% of income, things will look bleak. I am not saying that is not the issue, but the article is not about that topic.
There's a lot more people in the bottom 25% of income than in the top 25%. Do they not matter?