"White paper" protests last year toppled China's zero-Covid regime and brought into stark relief the growing disconnect between the aspirations and values of the country’s Generation Z and the expectations of the Party-state.

The Party is keenly aware of the challenge posed by the younger generation, but it does not have a compelling vision for China's youth beyond the nationalist card.

The social and demographic challenges in China aren't just a domestic issue. The consequences on the international stage of the Party-state papering over the concerns of the young with nationalist appeals could be significant, and warrant attention to this domestic challenge.

In this Enodo Untangled we take a look at the life and expectations of the younger generation and the growing gulf between their aspirations and the Party's vision for China's future. 

A rare protest

In late 2022 China witnessed a series of demonstrations that caught the authorities off guard. Demonstrations are of course nothing new in China but most are local and driven by local issues. 

The protests that broke out in November 2022 were nationwide and directed at the very apex of power. 

The proximate cause was popular discontent resulting from a series of harsh and prolonged lock-downs that were the centerpiece of Xi Jinping’s dynamic zero policy for combatting Covid. The trigger was an incident in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in which ten residents died in an apartment block fire supposedly because Covid restrictions had prevented the emergency services from responding in a timely manner. 

This incident resonated powerfully with communities all around China who had been worn down by onerous Covid restrictions. It fuelled a series of protests some of which involved calls for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to relinquish power.

Though widespread, the demonstrations never reached critical mass. But they undoubtedly catalysed a dramatic policy change. The Zero Covid policy was abandoned and the virus allowed to rip through the population. 

A matter of particular concern to China’s authorities was the extent to which educated youth played a leading role in the demonstrations, expanding their focus beyond Covid restrictions to address wider issues of freedom of expression and censorship. This took the form of “white paper” protests, starting in Beijing’s elite Tsinghua university, in which protesters stood silently holding up sheets of blank A4 paper. 

Predictably those involved in such protests were identified, rounded up and detained though many have since been released. 

The protests illuminated the growing disconnect between the aspirations and values of China’s Generation Z and the expectations of the Party-state.

China's demographic gulf

It is possible to divide China’s demographic into the same cohorts as apply in western countries: baby boomers and Generations X, Y and Z. 

But such categories are far less meaningful than the division, amounting to a chasm, between those over and under the age of forty. 

The distinction is between a generation that grew up in an era characterised by pervasive state control, limited expectations and poverty versus one that has grown up in an age of consumerism, much expanded personal horizons and a virtual absence of state control. Indeed, it is likely that most Chinese born after the mid-1990’s will have had their lives less touched by the state than many of their counterparts in liberal democracies. 

This may account for the response to the Covid lockdowns, which represented the first time this cohort had direct experience of everyday authoritarianism.

On the face of it, China’s younger demographic, amounting to 700 million, is in a fortunate position. Western consultancies McKinsey and Bain have calculated that 79% of spending on luxury goods and services in China is by those under the age of forty -- more or less the exact opposite of North America and Europe. 

But while China’s youth are better educated and appear to have far better prospects than previous generations, much of their spending power is in fact the result of generosity from an older cohort whose life experiences have inculcated deep-rooted habits of abstemiousness and the deferment of gratification. 

While they do not spend on themselves, the vagaries of China’s demographics arising from the one-child policy results in families consisting of four grandparents and two parents concentrating all their resources, and expectations, on one child – the so-called 4-2-1 demographic model. The rigid social pressure of that model has relaxed somewhat, since most Chinese couples qualified to have a second child starting in the mid-2000s, but the rough numbers of a social pyramid inverted onto the shoulders of the youngest generation still holds true. 

The under-forties in China -- at least those living in cities -- are more cosmopolitan in outlook than previous generations. They hold two-thirds of all passports and take as given their ability to travel overseas for pleasure, education or work. Many are comfortable in at least one foreign language, generally English. The children of wealthy parents may have been educated abroad or in internationally-styled private schools.  

They tend to be socially less conservative than earlier generations. The past decade has given rise to LGBTQ activism and the MeToo movement -- though latterly the Party-state has begun to clamp down on such movements, concerned by the prospect that such “vulnerable groups” -- 弱势群体 -- might serve as a vector for western subversion. And, of course, the clamp-down is driven by a long-standing disinclination to tolerate any form of organisation not under Party control.

Et in arcadia, ego

But the reality for China’s Generation Z has become far more complex. 

The 4-2-1 demographic model referred to above has had the effect of imposing a large burden of expectation on only children to excel academically and thereby secure well-paid and high-status employment. 

As a result, many of this generation have undergone long hours of extra-curricular tuition to ensure a good grade in China’s notoriously demanding university entry examination -- the gaokao. The number of candidates registering for the gaokao has reached a new high of 12.91 million people in 2023, an increase of 980,000 from 2022. The ranks of gaokao-takers have swelled as the alternative of an education abroad no longer ensures good employment prospects at home. 

Meanwhile, such has been the demand for extracurricular tuition that it gave rise to a multi-billion dollar industry providing employment for large numbers of graduates -- until the Party clamped down. 

In 2022 the Party-state closed down the tutoring industry overnight. Its stated concern was that it increased social inequality by unfairly advantaging the already privileged and that an entire generation were growing up physically underdeveloped through lack of exercise. Needless to say, this only had the effect of driving extracurricular tuition underground. It remains a significant factor in the lives of many young urban Chinese.

Inversion

The pressures experienced by Generation Z during adolescence have extended into the world of work which for many has proven disappointing and frustrating, involving low pay and long hours of often unproductive activity -- the so-called 9-9-6 model involving working from 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week. Social media posts also refer ironically to an 007 culture of working round the clock every day of the week. 

For many in this cohort property ownership and marriage are increasingly out of reach. In China the two are inextricably linked since any young bridegroom is expected to provide his spouse with an apartment --  but the young bride often chips in her own savings to secure approval for the match.

For Chinese men, the prospect of finding a partner is further reduced by a significant male-female imbalance that was a consequence of the one-child policy, which resulted in high levels of selective abortion and female infanticide as families attempted to ensure themselves a son. 

Furthermore, young educated Chinese women, who often find lucrative employment in the services sector, are reluctant to marry men who are educationally or socially beneath them. Many Chinese males are unable to reconcile themselves to marriage with a partner who earns more than they do for reasons of face.

The existence of these pressures had led to an awareness of the concept of inversion. 

This concept was first developed in the 1960s by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz working in rural Java. He concluded that population growth produced no corresponding gains in agricultural output and simply resulted in more workers engaged in meaningless and unproductive activity. In China the concept of inversion -- 内卷 -- was symbolised by a social media video clip of a student at Tsinghua university working on his laptop as he cycled to class. 

The awareness of this phenomenon had given rise to an urban counter culture referred to as 丧文化 (sang wenhua) -- loser culture -- with its adherents referring to themselves ironically as 屌丝 (diaosi) -- literally “pubic hairs”. Other popular tropes symbolising this rejection of aspiration are 躺平 (tang ping) -- lying flat and 摆烂 (bailan) -- letting it rot. 

The essence of this culture is the rejection of aspiration and the embracing of a minimalist lifestyle supported by casual labour. 

It is hard to estimate how widespread this counter culture has become; in practice it may not be that significant. But its emergence has caused concern in a Party-state seeking to project a message of positive energy and relentless optimism and has resulted in stern editorials in China’s official media excoriating those who seek to drop out of society.

Unemployment

The most pressing challenge facing China’s urban youth is growing and in all probability intractable levels of graduate unemployment.

Here numerous factors come into play. The slowdown in China’s economy due to Covid and a lacklustre post-Covid recovery: the closure during the pandemic of many of the smaller private companies that provide around 70% of jobs; Party-state measures to curb the “disorderly expansion of capital” particularly among digital service providers, the real estate sector and private tutoring have all contributed to a significant tightening of the supply of jobs in the urban labour market. 

Add to that  a significant expansion in  demand -- graduate numbers soared to 11.6 million in 2023, a 40% increase from 2019 and are predicted to reach 20 million by 2025 -- and trouble is brewing.

Youth unemployment currently stands at 20% and while the overall numbers involved -- some 6.3 million out of a total urban workforce of 486 million -- are not large, they nonetheless have disproportionate significance.

Paradoxically there is no overall shortage of jobs as such. China’s manufacturing sector has a high level of vacancies, estimated to reach 30 million by 2025. But Chinese intellectuals have traditionally seen manual labour as beneath them. As the Confucian thinker Mengzi (Mencius) put it, those who work with their brains rule, those who work with their hands are ruled -- 劳心者治人，劳力者治于人. 

Young Chinese graduates expect to get white-collar jobs and have shown little interest in working in factories. 

Many young Chinese graduates have taken to comparing themselves with an iconic character in a short story by the early-20th century author Lu Xun. The main character in the story, Kong Yiji is a sad figure who has repeatedly failed to pass the imperial examinations, success in which was the route to status and privilege. But because he is a scholar, dressed in a long gown, he cannot bring himself to earn a living through manual labour and is hence reduced to living from the proceeds of petty theft. This comparison has incurred severe criticism from the Party-state, and the use of the term on social media is subject to censorship.

The tight jobs market has led to greater risk-aversion among recent graduates with many more competing for a small number of civil service jobs which, though not lucrative, offer financial security and a less demanding working environment than the private sector. Others are deferring entry to the job market by pursuing post-graduate degrees. 

The problem has been brewing for a couple of years now, but is now in sharp focus for the Party-state which has sought to increase graduate employment opportunities in a variety of ways. 

The State Council has instructed local administrations to employ as many graduates as their budgets will permit and has made provision for financial subsidies and tax breaks to enable both private sector and state-owned companies to create one million internships. 

Graduates have also been enjoined to seek work in the countryside -- a throwback to the days of the Cultural Revolution when large numbers of urban educated youths were rusticated in order to learn from the workers and peasants. President Xi Jinping repeatedly exhorted young people to "seek hardships" in a recent state media article emphasising his suffering during the Cultural Revolution. Some provinces, notably Guangdong, have developed plans to send 300,000 graduates to the countryside in the coming years. 

The Ministry of Education has kickstarted a 100-day program operating from May until August this year, designed to provide targeted employment guidance, strengthen employment support for key groups and improve employment monitoring mechanisms at college.

The challenge

China’s youth poses major challenges for the Chinese Party-state. 

The first challenge is that there aren’t enough young Chinese people as China’s population drops below replacement rate. 

This poses a long-term concern as the 4-2-1 demographic model means one (or two) younger workers will in future have to support as many as six non-productive people at a time when China’s working age population faces a precipitate decline. 

Efforts to encourage young Chinese to have more babies have met with no success and look unlikely to do so.  Few urban couples want more than two and indeed, the continued population planning apparatus still officially caps the number of children at three. 

Another major challenge is in maintaining the support of a cohort whose experience and expectations are so much at variance with those of the senior Party leadership. 

At various times in recent years the Party-state has sought to address issues such as the perceived effeminacy of young Chinese men, influenced by a generation of androgenous Korean K-pop stars. At one point China’s state media referred to those influenced by this trend as 娘炮 -- a coarsely anatomical term whose English translation as “sissy” is almost on a par with the efforts of the Georgian scholar Thomas Bowdler to reproduce the works of Shakespeare without the rude bits. 

Young Chinese men have been enjoined to man up and prepare themselves for struggle, not further defined. It remains to be seen whether China’s educated youth will prove susceptible to the mass mobilisation techniques on which the Party-state tends to fall back when under pressure.

The third challenge is the mismatch of skills and China's crumbling vocational training system. 

China needs skilled blue collar workers not only to replace a large cohort of retirees but also to fulfil its ambitions to climb higher on the manufacturing value chain. Yet the vocational education system has fallen into shambles and on-the-job training has been inadequate. Starved of funding and undesirable, vocational secondary schools have seen the number of graduates plummet. 

Recognising the problem, the authorities have begun an overhaul of China's vocation training. First up is a revision of the law -- the first in a quarter century -- which is expected to address conspicuous problems while providing a legal foundation for vocational education's long-term development. How well it succeeds remains to be determined, but this transformation is unlikely to be swift.

Conclusion

At various key inflection points in China’s modern history the country’s youth has played a pivotal role. The first such occasion was the May 4th movement when Chinese university students, outraged by the failure of the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles to return Germany’s former territorial concessions to Chinese sovereignty, sparked a national protest which led to a movement of reform and modernity across society. 

Another was the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong cynically unleashed the latent anarchic impulses of China’s adolescents to shore up his power base and bring down his opponents within the Party. And finally the June 4 incident during which students occupying Tiananmen Square to protest about authoritarianism and elite corruption were massacred by the PLA. 

In each case the protests expanded far beyond the young to incorporate all sectors of society. But in each case it was the young who lit the touch paper. 

The Chinese Party-state is keenly aware of the potential of China’s educated youth to shape events and is having to walk a fine line between meeting their aspirations and ensuring their compliance with Party objectives. 

Mobilising the system to provide a quick solution to youth unemployment may yield short-term gains. But the demographic and job market mismatch challenges loom large and will not be easily or quickly solved. Most importantly, Xi Jinping is focused on his vision of "common prosperity" which is at odds with the materialistic expectations of China's youth. 

Lacking in a compelling vision of why the future should be economically better than the past, the Party-state could well have no choice but to heighten the sense of outside danger and stoke up further nationalist sentiment.

This is a critical consideration when assessing China's future geopolitical actions -- including the timing of its inevitable attempt to take control of Taiwan.