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It's hard to tell. China seems to have reached the point where the educational system can produce more trained people than the job market can provide middle cla
by Animats 1y ago
It's hard to tell. China seems to have reached the point where the educational system can produce more trained people than the job market can provide middle class jobs. This is is sometimes called "elite overproduction". The underlying problem is that manufacturing in China got so productive that most domestic and export markets are saturated.
There's the "lying flat" movement, where young people just give up the rat race and move to some low-cost place.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoPotential citation: The True Cost of China's Falling Prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876691 - November 2025 It appears that there is simply never going to be enough domestic demand for supply capacity, and China needs to lean into its export play where ever possible to the global market to soak up domestic production capacity until natural decline due to structural demographics. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-self-defeating-china-strategy https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-self-d... > In 1995, China accounted for less than five percent of global manufacturing output. By 2010, that number had jumped to around a quarter, and today it stands at nearly a third.