A girl hugging a young cattle at a breeding farm in Chongqing, China.
Published October 2, 2024
- Fed up with China’s employment situation, young people on the mainland are retreating to the countryside.
- Job hunting has been particularly difficult for young people as the Chinese economy struggles, said Chung Chi Nien, chair professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Fed up with China’s employment situation, young people on the mainland are retreating to the countryside.
China’s Gen Z and millennials are increasingly documenting their rural day-to-day “retirement” lives on social media after declaring that they got laid off, quit or are simply jobless. These self-identified “retirees,” who often state they were born in the 90’s or 00’s in their profiles, post their journeys online as they embark on extended career breaks or remain unemployed.
Last year, a 22-year-old self-proclaimed retiree who goes by the alias of Wenzi Dada set up residence in a bamboo shack at the edge of a cliff in China’s mountainous Guizhou province. Wenzi, who previously held a variety of jobs in auto repair, construction and manufacturing told local media that he grew tired of dealing with machines every day and quit to return to his hometown. He tried to find a job there but was never satisfied with the options.
“As time goes by, I begin to think about the meaning of life. Life is not just about the prosperity of the city. The tranquility of the countryside is also a kind of beauty,” he wrote in his Douyin profile, according to a CNBC translation. Douyin is the sister app to ByteDance-owned TikTok and tailored to the Chinese market.
Since moving to the mountains, Wenzi uploads videos to Douyin account showing how he cooks, harvests vegetables and maintains his mountaintop hut.
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SOURCE: www.cnbc.com
RELATED: Xi Jinping is worried about the economy – what do Chinese people think?
Two new pieces of research offer insight into how Chinese people feel about their future
Published September 30, 2024
China’s sputtering economy has its worried leaders pulling out all the stops.
They have unveiled stimulus measures, offered rare cash handouts, held a surprise meeting to kickstart growth and tried to shake up an ailing property market with a raft of decisions – they did all of this in the last week.
On Monday, Xi himself spoke of “potential dangers” and being “well-prepared” to overcome grave challenges, which many believe was a reference to the economy.
What is less clear is how the slowdown has affected ordinary Chinese people, whose expectations and frustrations are often heavily censored.
But two new pieces of research offer some insight. The first, a survey of Chinese attitudes towards the economy, found that people were growing pessimistic and disillusioned about their prospects. The second is a record of protests, both physical and online, that noted a rise in incidents driven by economic grievances.
Although far from complete, the picture neverthless provides a rare glimpse into the current economic climate, and how Chinese people feel about their future.
Beyond the crisis in real estate, steep public debt and rising unemployment have hit savings and spending. The world’s second-largest economy may miss its own growth target – 5% – this year.
That is sobering for the Chinese Communist Party. Explosive growth turned China into a global power, and stable prosperity was the carrot offered by a repressive regime that would never loosen its grip on the stick.
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SOURCE: www.bbc.com
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