China is completely dependent on Europe and the US to buy it's stuff else it's economy doesn't work. Ergo, they're much more dependent on exports than the US.
For them to punch their way out of this crisis they'll need to quit antagonizing the West, something they've foolishly gotten used to.
If they fail to do that, their RE bubble will also burst more quickly and may never recover. The nation has only achieved it's rapid GDP growth by massively building housing in newly expanding urban areas...that housing is overbuilt. If people are out of work, they can't afford to pay their mortgages, or buy to support this real estate.
China’s Jobless Don’t Always Show Up in the Data. But They Show Up in the Library.
Unemployed and afraid to tell their families, many need a place to figure out their futures; for some, it’s the stacks
Increasing numbers of people report spending time in the likes of Pudong Library in Shanghai after losing their jobs.
By Wenxin Fan, WSJ
Updated Dec. 24, 2023
Every weekday, Qin Ran arrives early at a Beijing public library, settles into her favorite cubicle, and tries to figure out what to do with her life.
It has been two years since the 36-year-old lost her job at a private-equity firm. Yet after a few freelance gigs and submitting a hundred or so résumés, she’s only landed two failed interviews.
She now spends her days browsing social media and studying for a graduate school entrance exam, which she hopes will let her delay the job search until later.
She has also started noticing other people around her age or younger showing up at the library every day. Although jobs aren’t part of the conversation when she talks to them, she says there is an unspoken understanding among them that they are all unemployed.
“It’ll be another 20-plus years before I reach retirement age. Will I have another opportunity to work?” asks Qin.
China is facing some of its greatest economic challenges in a generation after the country emerged from the pandemic with sluggish growth and record-high youth unemployment. It is a whole new experience for many young Chinese, who until recently had only known a strong job market in which talented people could quit their jobs and find new ones almost immediately.
Many are taking refuge in a place that has long been a bastion for those in need of a place to hang out—or if necessary, hide out: the library.
Howie Huang, an unemployed tech worker, at Pudong Library.
Some say they feel cooped up at home or are too ashamed to tell their relatives that they lost their jobs, so they have to conjure up places to go during the day.
Hanging out at Starbucks costs money. Passing time in a park—which many Japanese salarymen did after that country’s boom went bust in the 1990s—doesn’t work when the weather is bad.
The idea has spread through social media, as more unemployed people post accounts of their experiences passing days in libraries, inspiring others to do the same. Such accounts have become so common that some readers have suggested an index be created with data from library attendance to better measure unemployment.
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Although official unemployment is fairly low at around 5%, economists say that figure underestimates how challenging the job market has become because much of China’s rural population is excluded in the survey. Neither does the rate reflect the number of people who’ve recently lost full-time jobs, because anyone who works an hour or more in a week counts as employed.
Youth unemployment hit a record of 21.3% earlier this year, before the government stopped publishing the data, saying it needed to improve the methodology. Although authorities have promised to bring more jobs to college graduates, many private-sector companies have continued shedding staff.
In Guangzhou, Echo Wan says that as far as her extended family knows, she’s still working in risk control at Alibaba, the giant e-commerce company.
In reality, the 35-year-old quit in October after the company wanted her to move to a new team, which she felt wasn’t a good fit.
“Going to the library feels like the natural thing to do,” says Howie Huang, who spent four months unemployed.
Now, facing a tougher-than-expected job market, she regrets not trying to seek more internal opportunities before Alibaba broke up into six units earlier this year.
She finds some peace in the Guangzhou Library, where she can read or take a nap in one of the armchairs she finds. Otherwise, she works on sending out more résumés highlighting her master’s degree in mathematics and years of experience in risk control.
Responses have been lukewarm, she says. Her career before now was much smoother, when she was riding the wave of China’s economic boom. “That is something difficult to duplicate at the moment,” she says.
She leaves the library after dinner and arrives home, where she lives with her daughter, her husband and his parents, by 9 p.m.—the time she used to get off work.
Although her husband knows she isn’t working, she has kept it secret from her in-laws. If they found out, they would be nagging her to stay home and have a second baby, she says.
Many unemployed people who pass time in libraries do get new jobs, though the experience sometimes shakes their confidence.
Howie Huang, 33, spent months going to the sleek Pudong Library every day in Shanghai after he lost his job in information technology this summer. He sent out hundreds of résumés and jotted down his anxieties in an online diary, which he shared publicly.
The diary noted how he concealed his status from his parents, who don’t usually go online, so that they could be spared from worries. In an interview, he mentions a scene in “Tokyo Sonata,” a 2008 Japanese drama in which the protagonist hangs out in a park and a library after losing a position that was moved to China.
“The Japanese spent a whole day in a park during their economic downturn,” Huang says. “Now this is happening to me. Going to the library feels like the natural thing to do.”
Howie Huang was laid off twice in two years but eventually found work again.
After four months, Huang finally landed a new gig, though it involves an 80-minute commute each way. He had already been laid off twice in two years, alarming him after a decade of successful upward mobility.
Many of the most-regular library visitors are recent college graduates, who are among the worst-off in China’s labor market.
In a private library in a mall on the outskirts of Chengdu in western China, one 25-year-old woman, Tian, is growing ever more confused about whether going to college was a waste of her time.
After graduating two years ago, she wanted to get a civil service job for more stability. But that means competing with millions of other new graduates in an exam that only selects 2% of them, and she has already failed once.
While hanging out at the library, she has been studying for another go at the test, while debating whether it might be time to take a modest job beneath her qualifications.
Some of her classmates now make milk tea, she said. State media has been encouraging educated youths to “lose the long gowns”—symbols for learned scholars—and accept whatever work they can find.
“If everyone works in the system, who would be left to heal the pets or bring happiness to others from a coffee shop?” she told herself.
Yet she feels torn every time she is about to give in.
“I studied so hard so that I could have more options,” she says. “What’s the meaning of that?”
Write to Wenxin Fan at wenxin.fan@wsj.com
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