A record of more than one in five young Chinese are out of work, their career ambitions derailed by a depressed job market as the economy struggles to regain momentum after its long bout with COVID-19.
in over 30 years. An official report in November noted that the growing “anxiety, disappointment and confusion generated by college students” could shake confidence in China’s economic future. Resorting to the usual Communist Party exhortations to toughen up, in June Chinese President Xi Jinping urged young people to “eat bitterness” – or endure hardship – “to create a better China.
” Earlier this year, the Communist Youth League urged college graduates to “roll up their sleeves” and take up blue-collar jobs.Instead of eating bitterness, Xiang said, “full-time adult children” are taking advantage of the wealth accumulated by their parents to sit out the job drought, rest up and prepare for exams for relatively stable government jobs or for postgraduate studies. The trend also reflects changing attitudes among parents who typically would push their children to succeed financially and socially but now increasingly value their emotional well-being, especially when they see their them facing practical difficulties, said Mu Zheng, an assistant professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore. Having acquired a degree of financial security after decades of sustained economic growth, many parents now have the wherewithal to provide more support to their grown children. That was the case for Gui Xiaoru, who passed up the small-town teaching job she was offered after graduation because she was hoping for a better-paying position in a bigger city. She instead moved back home to Mianyang, in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, to study for a civil service exam. She cooks dinner for the family and goes grocery shopping. In return, she gets a 2,000 yuan monthly allowance that allows her to focus on her studies.“I think this phenomenon is normal,” Gui said, “but we can’t keep this status going forever.” Many “full-time adult children” are documenting their lives and domestic duties on social media. Some take on clearly defined roles such as cleaning, cooking and running errands for fixed monthly allowances. Wang Sinian, a 21-year-old from Bole, a city in far western China’s Xinjiang region near its border with Kazakhstan, started working at her parents’ home in April after finishing her studies at a Canadian university. On the social media platform Xiaohongshu, she documented her daily duties – scrubbing the kitchen, mopping floors, ironing clothes and running errands, in exchange for pocket money. But as is true for many of those who return home, her gig turned out to be temporary. In July, she returned to Canada to pursue a master’s degree. Marguerite Wang, the former gaming company employee, said she mostly keeps her parents company in return for pocket money.“I don’t want to be in the same kind of work situation as before,” she said, “where I didn’t have a private life and all my energy went into my work, but I actually didn’t know what I was so busy for.”Associated Press reporter Fu Ting in Washington and researcher Wanqing Chen in Beijing contributed to this story. The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day.
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