China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future

Plus, some aspects of Chinese society make the end impact of youth dissatisfaction worse than in the US.

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.

If only someone with access to thousands or even millions of repayment histories and income estimates could evaluate default risk on such loans. /s

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?

Yeah I bet there’s something deeply different about the collective psychological impact of being trapped because of an ostensible bad decision (the wrong major) vs simply having no options regardless of what major you choose. When I talk to my debt-shackled American friends there’s some acknowledgment of studying the wrong thing, even knowing that as kids we’re not equipped to make a smart decision, as you say. In China it seems a lot more bleak, like whatever you study you’ll likely end up unable to use it.

Also, in the US there isn’t pressure to do factory work specifically if you can’t get a job. That’s a particularly rough job, especially if you were pursuing white collar work, but it’s where the ccp is pushing folks.

Email in profile, always open to hearing from like minded folks on the topic of labor rights and organizing.

>We should have walked in and applied for a job with a firm handshake and maybe then we’d own a house.

Or the fact that people with higher education try to cram themselves into select couple of US, UK and EU cities.

It's notable that the average millennial whiner I encounter on tik tok is not a farmer/sailor/oil rig worker or trucker. But someone with liberal arts or some humanities degree that is mortally offended that the universe refuses to provide them with the lifestyle that they have seen on friends or sex and the city.

No captcha at all? So you are directly „verified”?

2.41 million is 0,17% of China's population.

"In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated roughly 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night,[4] or 0.17 percent of the population." [1]

So, given the best estimates, about the same homelessness rate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...