China’s economy has not improved. In the past, most of the street stalls were run by middle-aged and elderly people. With the emergence of unemployed college students, more and more young faces appeared on the street stalls. The picture shows a young man setting up a street stall on the streets of Beijing. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
[The Epoch Times, July 06, 2023](Epoch Times reporters Song Tang and Yi Ru interviewed and reported) Under the extreme thinking of the CCP authorities to “dare to fight”, “turbulent waves”, and “a century of changes”, the New Cultural Revolution is looming. Tensions at home and abroad have escalated, China’s economy in the post-epidemic era has failed to improve, and a wave of unemployment among college students has emerged.
The authorities encouraged young people to take off Kong Yiji’s long gown, set up street stalls, and ask for trouble. The young people rejected the pressure of the times created by the CCP system, and turned to lie flat, asking, “I’m only in my twenties, why do I have to bear so much?”
Angel Xiao, born in 1998, graduated from college this year. She is now setting up a street vendor on a street in Foshan, Guangdong. The street is very deserted and there are no customers.
Angel Xiao told The Epoch Times that her stall mainly sells desserts and sugar water. Today she only prepared 25 servings of flower armor powder. The cheapest price is 13 yuan a serving, and the most expensive is 23 yuan a serving. The income is 500 yuan a night. Around, the booth fee is 100 yuan per day, and after deducting the cost, you can earn more than 200 yuan today.
“A lot of times it won’t be like today that we can sell all of them. There will be more than every day.” She said.
Before graduation, when she was not busy with her studies, Angel Xiao went to work in a factory, worked as an online media for a while, and also worked as a part-time stall for a few months, but the business was not doing well. Now she returns home with her parents Be a full-time street vendor.
In May 2020, during the epidemic, the former Premier of the Communist Party of China, Li Keqiang, proposed the “street stall economy” in order to revive the economy and alleviate the increasingly severe unemployment crisis in various parts of China. After a while, it cooled down.
With the end of the three-year zero-clearing policy, people expected that there would be retaliatory consumption in China, but after a brief recovery at the beginning of the year, a new economic rebound did not appear. Confidence has waned amid a sluggish housing market, weak labor market and high government and household debt amid the flight of foreign capital from the U.S.-China political geography dispute.
The dire situation has led authorities to pick up the street-stall economy again, with Beijing and Shanghai relaxing rules earlier this year to allow sellers to operate in more public areas, and other major cities such as Hangzhou and Shenzhen following suit.
The street stall snack cart came into being. (Weibo)
Mr. Gao from Shenzhen told The Epoch Times, “The street where I live is around 6 or 7 o’clock every night. All kinds of cars with street stalls are rolled out. Sometimes the urban management comes to take pictures, but they don’t manage it. The night market There are often all kinds of snacks, fried fruits and the like, sometimes until two or three o’clock in the morning, or even later. They are all foreigners, and the locals should basically not be like that.”
In the past, most of the stalls were run by middle-aged and elderly people. With the emergence of unemployed college students, there are more and more young faces on the stalls. They will also use social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin to expand their influence and share Information such as stall location, category, experience, etc.
Mr. Liu, the person in charge of a billiard hall in Guangdong, told The Epoch Times that young people set up street stalls, and there is a commercial street and snack street behind them, and there are quite a lot of street stalls, such as milk tea, fruit, and sushi.
The CCP does not want to equate unemployment with land stalls
The authorities try to avoid equating youth unemployment with the street stall economy. News headlines mostly read, “Girls born after 2000 resigned from a street stall and earned more than 10,000 yuan in two weeks,” “Young white-collar workers work in high-end office buildings during the day, and turn into small vendors at night,” etc. According to the title, it seems that young people have jobs, and setting up stalls is just to catch up with the trend or experience another way of life.
For the CCP authorities, youth unemployment is not only an economic problem, but also a serious political problem. In addition to the beautification of unemployment data by the national statistics department, there are also universities and state-owned enterprises under the Communist Party Committee that actively cooperate in falsification.
Zhang Ailun, an international student at the University of Sydney in Australia, had such an experience. He told The Epoch Times that many schools are falsifying employment rates. You have to find a company to stamp you or issue you an internship certificate before you can graduate. The key is that you only need to sign a stamp, and you don’t need to find a job, and the employment rate will be recorded for you, but in fact there is still no employment.
Mr. Liu, the person in charge of the billiards hall, said that a college student studying e-commerce came to his shop last year for an internship. After the internship, he will be stamped with an internship stamp to get a graduation certificate.
Chen Hongyuan, a former teacher at an international school in mainland China, told The Epoch Times that some of his classmates were in charge of personnel in a state-owned enterprise. The classmates said that some state-owned enterprises have recruited people, and some positions have already been selected. . It is possible to give the society confidence and create a false impression that the labor force is still in short supply.
The youth unemployment rate hit a high of 20.8% in May, while the number of college graduates entering the labor force this summer rose to a record 11.6 million, the data showed.
Unemployment after graduating from university has become an unavoidable curse for young people. The picture shows the graduation ceremony held by Central China Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei Province on June 13, 2021. (STR/AFP)
Authorities’ regulatory crackdown on private enterprise has hurt industries that traditionally employ graduates, such as internet technology, education and real estate. The food delivery industry, which is regarded as a job for most people, has seen a sharp drop in orders and income as college students who cannot find jobs flood in.
According to the rider employment report released by Meituan in 2020, among the 2.952 million riders, riders with college education and above accounted for more than 24.7%, including 528,000 college students, 144,000 undergraduate students, and 57,000 graduate students and above .
Ma Rui from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia took the postgraduate examination twice in 2022 and 2021. He studied at Inner Mongolia Normal University as a junior college student, and later upgraded to Zhengzhou University. While taking the postgraduate entrance examination, he also tried to find a job.
Ma Rui told The Epoch Times, “As far as I know, many people are forced to take the postgraduate entrance examination, and I am one of them. Many fresh graduates cannot find good jobs. They can only delay employment through the postgraduate entrance examination.”
“We all apply for jobs from Haitou, and it’s hard to find after nearly a thousand applications. Some of the people we know are from Haitou. Generally, the software I use is “Zhilian” and “51job”. Anyway, it’s all over the country. Sexual Haitou.”
“There is even a need to work with a salary. You can only work if you give me money. This has now come to this situation.” Ma Rui said.
“I met many highly educated people in Zhuhai, and it was difficult to find a job. Their primary goal now is to survive, and they go for interviews in any industry. As long as they can find a job to support themselves, the salary is about the same, not too low. It’s hard to support yourself with a thousand dollars.”
A netizen named Alice Iron told The Epoch Times via email that the construction site and security guards are now being scrambled by a group of fresh graduates, and the age limit is also high. I was a 30-year-old apprentice and rejected me on the grounds that I was too old. Not to mention the difficulty of getting a job at present, it is also full of all kinds of scammers.
“I used to work in civil engineering. The construction industry is particularly difficult to find this year. The result of finding a real estate agency is to borrow salary, which is the money sent to you before the completion of the business. If you have no performance, you will be laid off and you will lose money. Do delivery The staff will lie to you that your car does not meet the regulations and you want to buy their new energy car. As a result of being a general worker, your salary will be reduced for a month, and you will have to wait until August to get your salary when you go to work in June,” he wrote.
Why do young people come out to set up street stalls instead of working outside? Angel Xiao believes that it is hard to find other jobs and the wages are low, and setting up a street vendor is better than working part-time. “Everyone wants to do it by themselves. They would rather sleep on the floor and be the boss.”
The picture shows a stall selling fried buns in Wuhan. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)
However, Mr. Liu, a local resident, told The Epoch Times that business is not easy now. Many people here are losing money every day. One-third of the whole street is closed, and few people come to the night market. “The people here are now more than before. Much less. In the past, they didn’t want to work in factories even if they were doing small businesses. If they had to work, they had to work in private shops instead of going to factories as slaves. But now they feel that setting up a stall is better than going to factories because they lose money every day. “
Mr. Liu said that since he is self-employed, in order to earn more money, he has no holidays and holidays. He opens his stall from 6 pm every day and runs until 2 am the next day, because many people cannot find other jobs and face Rent pressure, “The monthly rent for a slightly larger house in the local community is about 1,500 to 3,000 yuan, a small bungalow with two bedrooms and one living room costs more than 1,000 yuan, and a one-bedroom apartment costs seven to eight hundred.”
“If you can really make money by setting up street stalls, then that’s fine.” Chen Hongyuan said, “But I doubt the feasibility of setting up street stalls, because most people shop online now, and if there are more street stalls, it may also be possible. Introverted, right? If everyone comes out to set up street stalls, there are all over the street, how can they make any money?”
“Street stalls in China are too expensive. For example, this item costs five yuan. If you sell it for ten yuan, the next door dares to sell it for nine yuan. In the end, everyone will lose money there and keep it going.” Zhang Ailun said,
“First of all, the general environment and economy are not good. Everyone has no money, and no money to go to the street stalls to consume. And the things you consume at the street stalls, such as eating a dinner, the economic value created by eating at the street stalls and eating in the store In fact, it is almost the same. In fact, I personally feel that there is not much additional economy created. For example, if you buy a piece of clothing, you will eventually buy it. There is no difference in the economy created by buying from Taobao and from street stalls. The amount is there. .”
Young people reject the pressure of the times caused by the CCP system
Under the tense employment situation, the CCP’s official media guide young people to “take off the young people of Kong Yiji’s gown, go to the cash register, pick out sea urchins, and hit the cones.” They also published Xi Jinping’s reply to college students, saying that Chinese youth in the new era Walking into the countryside, “asking for hardship”.
However, young people are busy looking for a job every day, have endless overtime classes, and endless introversion, their income has dropped, their lives have been downgraded, and their hard work has no results. In one video, the young man asks, “I’m only in my twenties, why do I have to endure so much?”
People who are overwhelmed by life like a mountain can’t breathe, so they have to lie flat, give up everything, and relax a lot, because there is no tension in their hearts, but they are also free and easy. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP)
Zhang Ailun deeply felt, “I don’t think there is a problem with suffering, but a lot of suffering is meaningless. For example, going to the factory to drive screws is very bitter, but the hardship is endless. You can’t learn anything from it, and you can’t To improve yourself, you are only getting paid for your labor. If there are better options, why go through the pain?”
When the official media asked young people to take off Kong Yiji’s gown, Chen Hongyuan asked, did the person who said this first think that young people are not fit enough? Those with a master’s degree from Chinese universities are all vying to deliver food there. Isn’t this figure enough to let go?
“However, just such a food delivery job does not earn much money and is hard work, and then there are a group of people rushing to do it. It is a job that does not require any education, as long as you can read and speak, you can ride a bicycle. It’s something that can be done. Now many graduate students are doing this takeaway, but those who say this should stop talking about putting down their dignity, they have already put down their dignity.”
“Once you learn to bear hardships, you will have endless hardships.” Chen Hongyuan said.
Mr. Liu said, “There is no point in suffering (in communist China). What they saw in their fathers and older people is meaningless in suffering. It is true that the whole young people may be lying flat now.” The ending depends entirely on the environment, not on oneself, and the right to decide is not in one’s own hands.”
“I’m a young man with four nos. I don’t date, I don’t get married, I don’t buy a house, and I don’t want children. The cost of love is too high now. All attitudes and sincerity have to be accumulated with money. It doesn’t mean that I don’t work hard, because hard work has no results .Now the involution is so serious, I feel helpless. My greatest fatherly love is not to let my children come into this world…” This passage was widely reposted by netizens, and “Four No Youth” has become a new Internet trend language.
Zhang Ailun said, “I think this is also a kind of revolution. Young people resist in a desperate situation. It is similar to the kind of non-cooperation, but they don’t resist. Because everyone knows that resistance is too difficult, and a bloody revolution is too difficult. .And then, for individuals to live their lives well, lying down may be the only option.”
Chen Hongyuan believes that many people say that the pressure of life is a reason, but I don’t think it is the main reason. Because if you think about it, even in 1941 and 1942, there were wars and famines, and the number of people born exceeded 8 million (1941: 8.93 million, 1942: 8.87 million), and this year’s estimated total The number of births is less than 8 million. Today’s situation is better than the time of war and famine.
“Look at those countries in Africa where the living conditions are worse, but they still get married and have children. The most important point is that it is a little different now. In 1941 and 1942, famine and war, people still believe that one day they can get through it, but Today’s young people see the continuous withdrawal of enterprises, the continuous closure of private enterprises, the increasingly difficult job and employment, the rising unemployment rate year by year, and the increasingly introverted. In addition, Xi Jinping is re-elected as the emperor to mess around. They don’t know how long he can stay in power. Over the years, it should be (the CCP) that has deprived people of their confidence in the future.” Chen Hongyuan said.
“Everyone can’t figure it out. They can’t see the future. As long as everyone believes that the future can survive, and the future can survive through the present, I believe that everyone will not do this. It is precisely because they have no confidence in the future that they are able to It will.”
Responsible editor: Lin Yan#
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2023-07-07 07:33:45
