BEIJING: As China’s youth unemployment rate climbs, the country’s richest province has proposed to send 300,000 unemployed young people to the countryside for 2 to 3 years to find work.
Guangdong, the manufacturing powerhouse that borders Hong Kong, announced last month that it would assist college graduates and young entrepreneurs find work in communities. It also encouraged youth of rural areas to return to the countryside in search of work.
The announcement comes on the call of President Xi Jinping’s December call for urban youth to seek jobs in rural areas in order to “revitalize the rural economy,” echoing a previous campaign launched decades ago by former leader Mao Zedong, in which tens of millions of urban youth were effectively exiled.
Guangdong’s plan, which was heavily lambasted on social media, came as urban unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds reached 19.6%, the second-highest level on record. As per CNN calculations based on the most recent available statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, this corresponds to almost 11 million jobless adolescents in China’s cities and towns. (China only publishes data on urban employment.)
As a record number of 11.6 million college students graduate this year and seek jobs in an already crowded market, the youth unemployment rate could rise even further.
The rise in youth unemployment is largely due to China’s economic slump. The government’s now-defunct draconian Covid legislation pounded consumer spending and struck small businesses hard in the last three years. A regulatory assault on Internet real estate and education firms has also harmed the private sector, which employs more than 80% of Chinese workers.
