cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3997245
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics on the 21st, the unemployment rate of young people (16-24 years old) reached 18.8% in August. It’s the highest it’s been this year. This is attributed to the fact that a large number of students who graduated from school in the first half of this year jumped into the job front.
[…]
Chinese authorities temporarily suspended the release of monthly figures after youth unemployment hit an all-time high of 21.3% in June last year. Since then, new standards have been applied and announced from this year excluding enrolled students from the statistical target. Nevertheless, the youth unemployment rate, which was 14.6% in January this year, is steadily rising.
Last month, the story of 24-year-old Lee became a hot topic on Weibo, a Chinese social network service (SNS). After completing a master’s degree in physics at the graduate school, it was known that he got a job as a cleaner at a high school in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
[…]
In fact, many young Chinese people are flocking to gig workers (short-time workers). The number of delivery drivers registered on Meituan, a large delivery platform, jumped from 3.98 million in 2019 to 7.45 million last year. The growth of the delivery market slowed due to the end of the “COVID-19 lockdown” policy, but the number of delivery drivers increased.
[…]
Against this backdrop, the Chinese government has recently decided to strengthen its crackdown on slang and newly coined words on the Internet. Some analysts say that they intend to censor terms that criticize the Chinese Communist Party and the government.
Shouldn’t there be zero unemployment in a planned economy?
So communist of them.
Oh man I remember the poor “employed people” manning the retail counters at the silk factory tourist trap I visited in China. They wanted to sell their goods but you could also tell they just wanted something to do after standing there like statues all day waiting for customers to enter the store. Make-work employment can be its own form of hell.
I saw old women with straw brooms sweeping the side of the (active) freeway.
Except that it’s not planned.
You can learn more about the subject on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_market_economy#:~:text=The socialist market economy (SME,ownership%20and%20state%2Downed%20enterprises.
As per that article they literally are against the planned economy and think it’s a dumb idea.
It’s also not communist - the most apt description would be “state capitalism”. Again, read the wiki page linked above for more details and reasons why.
You know that and I know that but Tankies don’t know that.
And my favorite argument of theirs is that you have to go through capitalism to get to communism while ignoring that there is less of a socialist state under Xi than there is under Mao. No billionaires or stock market under Mao.