WION Data lab: Young and out of job in China; zero-Covid norms trigger unemployment crisis

Last weekend, students at Beijing's Tsinghua University came together to express their rage over China's zero-Covid rules. However, the economic trajectory of the nation is intrinsically linked to this unrest. The economic future of China's youth, who areat the centre of these countrywide protests seems to be jeopardised by the country's rigorous effort to contain Covid.Youth unemployment this year touched its highest on record.

Backdrop

A catastrophic fire at a high-rise building in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang province, which left 10 dead, sparked widespread social discontent. As claims that the lockdown impeded rescue operations were made based on fabricated recordings of the incident, frustration grew.

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Protests against zero-Covid policy across China

Although the demonstrations initially erupted in response to the fatalities in Xinjiang, they soon expanded to include criticism of China's zero-Covid policies, governmental restrictions, and monitoring, as well as, in some cases, direct attacks on Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Chinese youth and the Covid squeeze

The overall Chinese economy is currently in one of its most precarious phases in recent times. The economy was insulated by Xi Jinping's zero-Covid measures in 2020 and the first few months of 2021, but this year they have come at a significant cost.

A string of lockdowns in response to Omicron variant breakouts have crippled consumption and contributed to growth being lower than the stated target of 5.5 per cent, which was already the lowest in decades.

The youth unemployment rate, which reached 20 per centin July just after Shanghai was placed under lockdown, has been one of the effects that are most obvious. In contrast to overall unemployment, which is 5.5 per cent, it has been around that level for months. The measurement, which the government started tracking

According to media reports, China's youth unemployment rate hit a record high of 19.9 per cent in July, with nearly one in five young people unemployed. It was also heavily attributable to Beijing's zero-Covid action of enforcing stringent widespread lockdowns in big cities like Shanghai, which put recent grads in less than optimal economic circumstances.

Zero-Covid has had a significant negative economic impact. Businesses in Shanghai that are still having to deal with stringent efforts to contain the virus are still feeling the effects of a two-month shutdown in the spring. A track-and-trace system is one of them, and everyone who comes into touch with a positive case runs the daily risk of being quarantined.

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The purchasing managers' index data, released on Thursday, a day after it appeared that the government had made some changes to its Covid approach, show that economic weakness persisted in the manufacturing sector in November despite the fact that the number of daily infections remained in the tens of thousands.