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A year after telling young people in China struggling to get a job that they should “eat bitterness”, or endure hardship, Xi Jinping has changed his tune as the world’s second-largest economy struggles to return to full health.
With youth unemployment still running at nearly three times the overall rate, China’s president sounded a more sympathetic note on Tuesday, ordering the Communist party’s politburo leadership group to make the provision of “high-quality full employment” an economic priority.
This was in stark contrast to his comments to youth last May that they should embrace difficulties as he did in the 1960s when, as a teenager during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, he was sent to the countryside to do manual labour, including shovelling manure.
On Tuesday, Xi told the politburo to “give top priority to the employment of college graduates and other youth groups”.
“[We should] develop more jobs that are conducive to giving full play to their knowledge and strengths,” state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.
China’s economy grew more than 5 per cent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. But economists say the recovery is patchy — supported by manufacturing, exports and government investment, but with household consumption and investor sentiment still affected by a slump in the property sector.
China’s unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 was running at above 21 per cent in June last year, when the National Bureau of Statistics suddenly stopped reporting the figures, citing the need to improve the methodology.
The government started releasing figures for youth unemployment again in December, but this time excluded students. The figure came in at 14.7 per cent in April, down from 15.3 per cent a month earlier, but still much higher than the urban unemployment rate of 5 per cent.
In his statement to the politburo, Xi said leaders needed to “encourage young people to engage in employment and entrepreneurship in key areas, key industries, [and] urban and rural grassroots and small and medium-sized enterprises”.
About 12mn graduates are set to enter China’s workforce this year, but many complain they cannot find work commensurate with their qualifications or with salaries high enough to justify the expense of going to university.
Leaders needed to analyse “the reasons for the labour gap in some industries, and solve the problem of ‘there are jobs but no one to do them’”, Xi told the politburo.
A year ago, Chinese official media released articles emphasising how Xi’s experiences in the countryside in 1969 were an example for today’s youth.
“To collect manure you had to take off your shoes, roll up your trouser legs, [and] jump in barefoot,” said one article, which mentioned eating bitterness nearly 30 times, quoted him as saying. “He [Xi] was covered in sweat and manure and urine, mixed together, wet and smelly.”
The article said that “only by passing the labour test and establishing the idea of ‘seeking hardship for oneself’ can you . . . make your thoughts closer to the people”.
In other comments to the politburo, Xi told cadres to take measures to promote the employment of migrant workers — the millions of people who move within China for work.
As construction work has dried up with the property slowdown, many labourers have had to look for other jobs, with some returning to their hometowns and villages.
“Stabilise the scale of employment and income of people who have been lifted out of poverty, and prevent large-scale return to poverty due to unemployment,” Xi told the politburo.