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China: Pessimistic Gen Z China challenges Xi Jinping post-COVID

China: Pessimistic Gen Z China challenges Xi Jinping post-COVID

 


On the first weekend after COVID-19 restrictions ended last month, dozens of young Chinese people jostled in the dark at a heavy metal concert in a tiny Shanghai music hall that reeked of sweat and strong alcohol.

It’s the kind of freedom young Chinese demanded in late November protests against the zero COVID policy that has become the biggest outpouring of public anger in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago. years.

After three years of lockdowns, testing, economic hardship and isolation, many of China’s Gen Zers – the 280 million people born between 1995 and 2010 – had found a new political voice, repudiating their stereotypes as nationalist warriors. on the keyboard or apolitical moccasins.

Pacifying a generation facing near-record youth unemployment and some of the slowest economic growth in nearly half a century presents a political challenge for Xi, who has just begun an unprecedented third term. Improving youth livelihoods without abandoning the country’s export-led growth model poses inherent conflicts for a government that prioritizes social stability.

This generation is the most pessimistic of all age groups in China, according to surveys. While the protests have succeeded in hastening the end of COVID-related restrictions, the hurdles young Chinese people face in achieving better living standards will be harder to overcome, some analysts say.

“As the road ahead of young people becomes narrower and more difficult, their hopes for the future evaporate,” said Wu Qiang, a former politics professor at Tsinghua University who is now an independent commentator in Beijing. Young people no longer have “blind trust and adulation” in Chinese leaders, he added.

Some young Chinese people who spoke to Reuters echoed the frustration. “If they didn’t change the policy, then more people would protest, so they had to change,” said Alex, 26, who declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals from the authorities, in an interview before the Shanghai concert.

“But I don’t think young people will go back to thinking that nothing bad ever happens in China.”

“EDUCATED PESSIMISM”

Young people, especially in cities, are often at the forefront of protests around the world; students led China’s biggest pro-democracy uprising in 1989, which Beijing crushed in a military crackdown.

But China’s Gen Z has its own characteristics that present a dilemma for Xi, some analysts said.

In recent years, some young Chinese social media users have drawn international attention for their ferocity in attacking critical views of China, including Beijing’s COVID policies, online. They became known as “little roses”, a term associated with the color of a nationalist website, and drew comparisons to China’s aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomats and Mao’s Cultural Revolution Red Guards. Zedong.

With the economy slowing under the weight of pandemic restrictions, a counter-trend has emerged, but not quite of a liberal type that pushes against growing nationalism in the West. Many young Chinese people have chosen to “stay flat,” a term used to describe people who have shunned the corporate rat race by adopting a minimalist lifestyle and doing just enough to get by.

There is no data on the number of Chinese who are inclined towards these prospects. Brewing below the surface before the protests, however, was a unifying factor: growing dissatisfaction with their perceived economic prospects.

A survey of 4,000 Chinese by consultancy Oliver Wyman found that Gen Z were the most negative about China’s economic prospects of all age groups. Their peers in the United States, on the other hand, are more optimistic than most previous generations, according to research by McKinsey.

According to the Wyman survey conducted in October and released in December, some 62% of China’s Gen Z are worried about job security and 56% are worried about prospects for a better lifestyle, far more than older generations.

In the United States, the study published in October showed that 45% of 18-24 year olds were worried about job stability, but scored better on the McKinsey gauge of perceptions of future economic opportunities than all. groups except 25-34 year olds.

Earlier in the Xi era, things looked brighter.

In 2015, a Pew Research Center study found that 7 out of 10 Chinese people born in the late 1980s had a positive view of their economic situation. At the same age, 96% of them felt that their standard of living was better than that of their parents.

“It’s educated pessimism. It’s based on the facts and the reality they’re witnessing,” said Zak Dychtwald, founder of research firm Young China Group, which examines mood trends among young Chinese people. young adults.

“I don’t think these protests would have happened ten years ago, but this younger generation thinks they should be heard in a way that older generations haven’t.”

He said further unrest appeared unlikely in the short term, but the ruling Communist Party was under pressure to offer ‘some hope and direction’ to the country’s youth at an annual legislative meeting in March .

Failure to provide such solutions could rekindle long-term protests, he said.

FIX THE YOUTH

In a New Year’s address, Xi acknowledged the need to improve prospects for China’s youth, not mentioning the protests against his zero-COVID approach.

“A nation will only prosper when its young people prosper,” Xi said, without giving details of potential policies.

For the stability-obsessed Chinese Communist Party, giving Gen Z more political agency is unthinkable.

Instead, analysts say Chinese policymakers must create well-paying jobs for young people and ensure they prosper economically, like their parents’ generation, who accepted limited freedoms in return for prosperity. promised.

But getting there is harder in a slower economy, and some of the policies that could improve living standards for young Chinese people conflict with other priorities for the world’s second-largest economy: securing the engines of its 15-fold expansion in past two decades continue to run, say some political analysts and economists.

Meeting Gen Z expectations for higher wages would make Chinese exports less competitive. Making housing more affordable could mean allowing a sector responsible for a quarter of China’s economic activity in recent years to collapse.

Xi’s second-term crackdown on technology and other private-sector industries has also led to job losses and fewer opportunities for young people.

Despite all the government talk of “common prosperity,” it seems impossible to level the playing field for this new generation, said Fang Xu, an urban sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Their parents were able to accumulate such wealth in the housing market, through private entrepreneurship, and that leap is unlikely to be repeated,” Fang said.

“Leveling the playing field means devaluing the property market enough that it is not impossible for young people to buy a house, but it would be a blow for older generations.”

WANT TO GO

Given the risk of arrest, most of those who participated in protests against COVID restrictions are at rock bottom. It’s unclear what their hopes and plans are or how they vary. But some young people feel pressured to pursue their ambitions elsewhere.

University student Deng, 19, who spoke to Reuters on condition of partial anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, has little hope that she can thrive in China.

“If I want to stay in China, I have these two choices: stay in Shanghai to work and take an average office job or listen to my parents, go back to my hometown, take the civil service exam, stay flat “Deng said, adding that she planned to emigrate instead.

Data from internet giant Baidu shows online searches for studying abroad were five times the 2021 average during the two-month lockdown of Shanghai’s 25 million people last year. Another spike occurred during the November protests.

Neither Deng nor Alex see much room for further dissent in the near future.

“You can either accept the system or leave China. You can’t change the system here, the authorities are too powerful,” Alex said.

A few days later, at the Shanghai venue, Alex found a vantage point among fellow metal fans for the first time since the COVID rules were relaxed. She absorbed the sounds of the Rat King group, her worries for the future put aside for one night.

Sources

1/ https://Google.com/

2/ https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/chinas-pessimistic-gen-z-poses-challenge-for-xi-post-covid/articleshow/97076309.cms

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