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China’s defeated youth: Young Chinese have little hope for the future
- n2j3 3y agohttps://archive.is/1T1eN https://archive.is/1T1eN
- jessriedel 3y agoDoes anyone else have captcha issues with archive.is these days? I just hit an infinite loop of repeated asks to solve a captcha. This is a relatively recent issue. Here's an alternative link from the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230819151745/https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/08/17/chinas-defeated-youth https://web.archive.org/web/20230819151745/https://www.econo...
- almost_usual 3y agoAre you using Apple Private Relay? I think there is an issue with them and Cloudflare.
- slaw 3y agoI just tested. Firefox, Chrome, Brave for Android and Firefox for Windows - infinite loop Edge for Windows - no captcha
- bratwurst3000 3y agoNo captcha at all? So you are directly „verified”?
- slaw 3y agoYes, no captcha at all. On my other laptop, captcha infinite loop for both Firefox and Edge.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thefourthchime 3y agoYes! Thank's for the link!
- WillPostForFood 3y agoCloudflare DNS stopped resolving Archive Today (.is) a few weeks ago. Probably related to this disagreement from 2019. https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/ https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
- data-ottawa 3y agoFYI if you get stuck in a captcha loop, try an audio captcha, it'll tell you that there's an error and you can't proceed, but for whatever reason the visual captcha will happily keep you clicking on signs and traffic lights even though you can't ever pass. Often the cause seems to be the captcha service itself getting too much traffic end not your IP or browser.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoIt’s so interesting to see this play out the same in both China and the US; a generation that can’t afford to buy a home, were told higher education would lead to a secure career and it doesn’t, falling fertility rate accordingly, etc. “Eat bitterness” indeed.
- jorts 3y agoWildly different scenarios.
- juujian 3y agoElaborate?
- localplume 3y agohave 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 extremely privileged to even try and say its the same as in the US. The cultures are so incredibly different in every single way.
- zls 3y agoPlus, 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.
- booleandilemma 3y agoIs China writing articles like this about the UK/US? I feel like there's plenty of material.
- themodelplumber 3y agoYes absolutely. Not only that, but they run those stories through various state channels with the intent to propagandize...even to non-US/UK countries, and even via media like shortwave radio. (While also actively jamming other radio stations in that case)
- space_fountain 3y agoI think the time most recently when I’ve felt this was talking to a young adult from Hong Kong in a hostel in Switzerland last month and he was surprised that the tap water is safe to drink in most of America
- lelandbatey 3y agoLikewise my wife from Mexico was highly suspect of the tap water everywhere we'd go till we went over just how different the tap water situation is in the US compared to Mexico.
- mkl95 3y agoChina kinda owns the Western teen ideology via TikTok. They can make them feel defeated at any time.
- ReptileMan 3y agoWestern teen and millennials are perfectly capable to do that on their own. It was us millennials that elevated grievance politics and cry-bulling into an art form. From the moment I turned 18 it was continuous barrage of news how fucked up everything is.
- deleted 3y ago
- hcarvalhoalves 3y agoThe article is looking at China specifically, but this doesn't seem to be a local trend (over-qualified labour with wages below cost of living) by any means.
- Retric 3y agoThe 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.
- dustedcodes 3y agoDo 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?
- Retric 3y ago“In 2015, it was reported that there are more than 3 million people are homeless in China.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_China Though it’s hard to get accurate figures. “In 2011, there were approximately 2.41 million homeless adults and 179,000 homeless children living in the country.[1] However, one publication estimated that there were one million homeless children in China in 2012.[2][unreliable source]” China doesn’t want embarrassing figures known and actively hides such things, so it’s very hard to compare them with other countries. However, they have zero problems cracking down on homelessness populations and forcefully relocating them.
- hcarvalhoalves 3y ago2.41 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_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
- dellorter 3y ago[flagged]
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- NhanH 3y agoThe 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.
- anigbrowl 3y agoThere's a lot more people in the bottom 25% of income than in the top 25%. Do they not matter?
- apsec112 3y agoThere are the same number of people in the bottom and top quartiles, by definition
- NhanH 3y agoI am happy to read and discuss an article about bottom 25% too. But don’t start a topic describing someone in the bottom 25%, and then use him to preface for an entirely different population
- AlexMennen 3y agoWhat do you think "bottom 25%" and "top 25%" mean, exactly?
- bratwurst3000 3y agoThink he meant the bottom 25% of income not people with income.
- oezi 3y agoWhat is the median income in China would matter to your point.
- hosh 3y agoThat’s weird. I’ve been hearing for years, nationalist and optimistic sentiment in China being higher among youths than in the US.
- themodelplumber 3y ago> nationalist and optimistic sentiment in China being higher among youths Just how "AND" are we talking here...one needs to know this to determine how well certain state machinery is working overseas, thanks in advance
- thriftwy 3y agoNationalist sentiment is usually not optimistic since it implies at least one major unsolved problem facing the nation.
- thriftwy 3y agoAs Putin once said, "I've created a brilliant scheme to pay you all $2000/mo for basically nothing, and here you are too lazy to show up at the nearest recruitment center"
- EarthIsHome 3y ago[flagged]
- slibhb 3y agoYoung 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.
- DrFlipper 3y agoDistinction without a difference. Just because we give our unhappy youth's misery a name and send them home with a bottle of pills doesn't mean they're not unhappy.
- data-ottawa 3y agoCitation needed. 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).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoMyself and everyone that I know in that age range who has followed "the formula" (STEM degree -> workforce) has plenty of money and a house or could buy a house if they wanted to.
- data-ottawa 3y agoMy point was you can be unhappy with the system and not be mentally ill. When I was in school STEM was not considered the only path to success. The oft repeated argument was you're a better candidate for high level jobs with something like an English degree than somebody with no degree at all, which turned out to be pretty terrible advice. I only had one teacher who said that was a terrible idea (he compared it to a degree in underwater basket weaving).
- 3y ago
- inparen 3y agoReplace China with any country's name and article will still ring same feeling. 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.