![]() ![]() Xi, along with millions of his peers, spent years toiling in the countryside as a so-called rusticant-until Mao died and massive public outcry led to the campaign’s termination in 1980. Hsia-fang also provided Mao much-needed cover to disperse ideological undesirables across the country while facilitating the separation of Chinese youth from their families, in essence binding them to the party. Mao’s strategy was rooted in the knowledge that each year millions of urban high school graduates would reach adulthood in China’s largest cities, but that jobs only existed for half of them. Back then, amid growing public criticism of his economic policies, Mao’s infamous downward transfer (or hsia-fang) campaign aimed to ease urban unemployment by forcefully relocating tens of millions of young people from China’s crowded cities to its countryside. It has less in common with the booming, optimistic 1990s and more with Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, the last time China’s economy was in dire straits. The result: a 47 percent jump in college admissions during the program’s first year.īut today’s job crisis is different. A decade after the shock of Tiananmen, as China was facing a tight job market and getting ready to join the World Trade Organization, the CCP went further, codifying a long-term college enrollment expansion program designed to stimulate China’s economy. As of 2020, students at China’s top 10 universities paid around $800 in annual tuition compared to around $50,000 at the United States’ premier universities. The CCP’s fears about societal unrest did not result in a robust unemployment safety net but rather an affordable higher education system, so much so that student debt is virtually nonexistent in China. Today’s job crisis has less in common with the booming 1990s and more with Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, the last time China’s economy was in dire straits.įollowing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, for instance, the CCP mollified its restive youth by promising near-boundless opportunity amid what became the greatest economic expansion in history. Ever cognizant of the threat to regime stability posed by mass urban unemployment, the CCP has customarily sought to tackle these challenges head on, often striking grand bargains with the Chinese people to avert political disaster. Other crises stemmed from events outside of Beijing’s control, like the 2008-2009 Western financial crisis and the resulting drop in global demand for Chinese exports. ![]() Some of these hazards resulted from the CCP’s own economic policies, such as its crackdown on China’s multibillion-dollar tutoring industry. For many decades, CCP leaders have demonstrated a remarkable ability to divine unemployment threats long before they manifested themselves. Just like many other countries, China has long faced employment booms and busts. It also serves as a stark reminder that China’s centrally planned system remains woefully ill-equipped to cultivate, employ, and retain top talent, even as China doubles down on technological innovation to try to outcompete the United States. ![]() The stakes in the looming jobs crisis could not be higher for Xi, who is looking to have his post as CCP general secretary extended at this fall’s 20th Party Congress. The problem for today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is that yesteryear’s bag of tricks will only get it so far, regardless of how hastily Chinese leader Xi Jinping backtracks on the policies that triggered his country’s fiscal meltdown. And China’s leaders know it-even if their proposed policy prescriptions, such as sending urban students to work in the countryside, harken back to a bygone era. Put plainly, China risks falling off the employment cliff. Many will make less than truck drivers-if they are lucky enough to find a job at all. and European workers are seeing their salaries surge, this year’s Chinese graduates can expect to earn 12 percent less than the class of 2021. One survey found that of the 11 million Chinese students who graduated from college this summer, fewer than 15 percent had secured job offers by mid-April. However, there is one commodity China cannot produce fast enough: jobs for its millions of newly minted college graduates.Īmid China’s worsening economic crisis, nearly one-fifth of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are now unemployed, with millions more underemployed. China, often dubbed “the world’s factory,” accounts for around 30 percent of global manufacturing output.
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