China's growing instability factors: Unemployed Youth

They do have retirement supplied by the central government, but it isn't anything an American or European would trade for. Retirement is a few hundred dollars a year for the poorer people, and up to $6,000/yr for the middle and upper classes. China recently caused a firestorm by announcing that the retirement age is being raised by 5 years. You have to remember that 40% of the population is getting by on an income less than $2,000 USD a year, so retirement for those people will be less.

Medical care is cheap, but you get what you pay for. I don't think they have anything like Medicare because it is so cheap. It gets better and more expensive in the bigger cities like Shanghai.

 

These are Trump-obsessed people. If a post is not about Dear Leader, it must be off-topic.

 

To address the original topic, the lack of jobs for China's youth is worse than it looks. There are jobs in China, but they are jobs that no one wants in things like agriculture. No one with a college degree wants to work in the fields for a farmer. Yet that is exactly what Chairman Xi told them to do.

Not only are China's youth not getting jobs, they are not learning HOW to work in a job. They aren't gaining experience. They are staying at home with their parents, "lying flat", waiting for the economy to recover. They are not going to be able to pass on job-related knowledge and wisdom to the next generation. They are unlikely to get married and have kids without a job, accelerating China's population decline. The longer this goes on, the more damage it will do to China's economy.

All of these problems because China refuses to be a peaceful nation that abides by international law. They have offended their wealthiest customers by threatening to invade their neighbors. Chairman Xi is married to the idea of military power and conquest, so he will have to be replaced by someone less militaristic, and the military will have to be partly deconstructed, before the economy has any hope of recovering.

 

I listen to Peter zeihan short blurbs on podcasts. Some of his takes/predictions tend to be more extreme, but he is saying between the demographic time bomb, debt, etc that China as a country will economically implode within a decade.

 

They actually did come up with a reward for having multiple children. The children can be educated. Previously, only the first born could be educated in a public school. Any other children would have to stay at home. This was another drag on the economy, as well as a cause of family strife and misery. Many second children had to be shuffled off to childless relatives in the country to raise to avoid paying the second child penalty (the fine was much higher in the larger cities--as much as $20,000 USD) and get them educated. They cancelled the fine for extra children, also.

 

It's kinda sad that the people in power either cannot recognize the need to replace Chairman Xi, or are afraid to even raise the issue for fear of being stripped of their wealth and possessions and exiled to a desert province or jailed. Xi himself seems very unlikely to recognize the need for change. He's gone too far on the path that he's on to change course.

 

By 2007 or 2008 Mike Shedlock (Global Economic Trend Analysis blog) was saying that when China"s massive real estate bubble collapsed it would rock the world. I paid attention because in July 2006 Shedlock said US real estate was going to collapse. The China property bubble lasted longer than almost anyone who was aware of it probably thought. Predictions are hard.

When Xi took over in 2012-2013 strategic thinker Gregory Copley said that Xi was a maoist. As a maoist he would shrink the private sector to keep his business class opponents from becoming too strong. For a maoist like Xi party control takes precedence over the overall health of the economy, although they are connected, of course. If the private sector got too strong it might erode Xi's power. If the economy gets to weak the people in urban areas have less and less to lose or live for and they could revolt and overthrow CCP rule (Something like this happened in China ~1908 when China was much less urbanized).

Chinese port traffic was very low last year and traffic is down on the retail streets (from what I've heard). Biden's support of the Ukraine war was a lifeline for Xi because Russia had to sell cheap energy and food to China when by some accounts the CCP was close to collapse.

 

From what I have read / heard Xi has pretty much eliminated any potential competitors for the picture.

Guys like that are far more concerned with consolidating power than economic growth or the well being of the population.

 

China not exactly struggling …