China’s economic malaise is causing disillusion among the young

livemint.com:

Xi Jinping won power in 2012, the government has grown more repressive and society less vibrant. Censors have turned the internet into a drearier place, while letting nationalist trolls drum in the state’s talking-points. At university students must grapple with Mr Xi’s forbidding personal ideology.

Worst of all for some, China’s economy is stagnating. The unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 in cities is over 21%—a number so disheartening that earlier this month the government stopped publishing the data, pending a review. For our Briefing this week, we talked to young Chinese men and women about how they feel.

Plenty still have faith in the party and support Mr Xi’s calls to make China strong. But many are suffering a deep sense of angst. University graduates are finding that the skills they spent years learning are not the ones employers want.

Scarce jobs and punishing property prices have dashed their hopes of buying a home and starting a family. We scraped social media and found that the mood is growing darker. Disillusioned youth talk of tangping (lying flat) and bailan (letting it rot), synonyms for giving up.

China is hardly the only country where young people are gloomy. Nearly half of Americans aged 18 to 34 say they lack confidence in the future. When Chinese lie flat, Americans “quiet quit".

Perhaps Gen Z and millennials the world over have a tendency to mope. Yet in China, where some 360m people are between the ages of 16 and 35, something more serious seems to be happening. The ladder to a better life is being lifted away.