中国，通常被称为“世界工厂”，占全球制造业产出的 30% 左右。然而，中国无法以足够快的速度生产一种商品：为数百万刚毕业的大学毕业生提供工作。
Amid China’s worsening economic crisis, nearly one-fifth of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are now unemployed, with millions more underemployed. One survey found that of the 11 million Chinese students who graduated from college this summer, fewer than 15 percent had secured job offers by mid-April. Even as many U.S. and European workers are seeing their salaries surge, this year’s Chinese graduates can expect to earn 12 percent less than the class of 2021. Many will make less than truck drivers—if they are lucky enough to find a job at all.
Put plainly, China risks falling off the employment cliff. And China’s leaders know it—even if their proposed policy prescriptions, such as sending urban students to work in the countryside, harken back to a bygone era. The problem for today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is that yesteryear’s bag of tricks will only get it so far, regardless of how hastily Chinese leader Xi Jinping backtracks on the policies that triggered his country’s fiscal meltdown.
The stakes in the looming jobs crisis could not be higher for Xi, who is looking to have his post as CCP general secretary extended at this fall’s 20th Party Congress. It also serves as a stark reminder that China’s centrally planned system remains woefully ill-equipped to cultivate, employ, and retain top talent, even as China doubles down on technological innovation to try to outcompete the United States.
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Just like many other countries, China has long faced employment booms and busts. For many decades, CCP leaders have demonstrated a remarkable ability to divine unemployment threats long before they manifested themselves. Some of these hazards resulted from the CCP’s own economic policies, such as its crackdown on China’s multibillion-dollar tutoring industry. Other crises stemmed from events outside of Beijing’s control, like the 2008-2009 Western financial crisis and the resulting drop in global demand for Chinese exports. Ever cognizant of the threat to regime stability posed by mass urban unemployment, the CCP has customarily sought to tackle these challenges head on, often striking grand bargains with the Chinese people to avert political disaster.
Today’s job crisis has less in common with the booming 1990s and more with Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, the last time China’s economy was in dire straits.
Following the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, for instance, the CCP mollified its restive youth by promising near-boundless opportunity amid what became the greatest economic expansion in history. The CCP’s fears about societal unrest did not result in a robust unemployment safety net but rather an affordable higher education system, so much so that student debt is virtually nonexistent in China. As of 2020, students at China’s top 10 universities paid around $800 in annual tuition compared to around $50,000 at the United States’ premier universities. A decade after the shock of Tiananmen, as China was facing a tight job market and getting ready to join the World Trade Organization, the CCP went further, codifying a long-term college enrollment expansion program designed to stimulate China’s economy. The result: a 在该计划的第一年，大学录取率增加了47% 。
但今天的就业危机不同了。它与蓬勃发展、乐观的 1990 年代的共同点较少，而与毛泽东的大跃进（中国经济最后一次陷入困境）有更多的共同点。那时，随着公众对其经济政策的批评越来越多，毛臭名昭著的下移（或下放）运动旨在通过将数千万年轻人从中国拥挤的城市强行转移到农村来缓解城市失业。毛泽东的战略根植于这样的知识，即每年有数百万城市高中毕业生在中国最大的城市成年，但其中只有一半存在工作。夏芳还为毛泽东提供了急需的掩护，以驱散全国各地的意识形态不良分子，同时促进中国青年与家人的分离，实质上将他们与党联系在一起。习和他的数百万同龄人一起，作为所谓的乡下人在农村劳作多年——直到毛泽东去世，公众的强烈抗议导致运动于 1980 年终止。
中共随后将毛泽东的下乡政策称为“灾难”，这是一种罕见的历史谴责。然而，这种耻辱并没有阻止习近平重振毛泽东权力游戏的元素。几年前，习近平宣布了新的计划，鼓励年轻的城市学生在暑假期间到农村去志愿服务。类似的大学生项目也紧随其后，最终导致了最近发布的一项中共政令，其中规定了一次性创业补贴、政府支持的贷款和其他税收优惠政策，以鼓励大学毕业生在中国农村创业。公平地说，此类计划还不是强制性的。但毛泽东也不是，至少一开始是这样。
在毛泽东时代的另一个回声中，习近平也迟迟没有意识到中国当前就业危机的规模。多年来，习近平一直希望协同推进城市化进程、以债务为动力的基础设施支出以及微不足道的结构性改革将重振中国萎靡不振的增长。现在，用习近平的政治对手、即将离任的中国总理李克强的话来说，中国在建立高等教育体系以应对政治需要而非市场需求之后，现在面临着一个看似危险的“复杂而严峻”的就业市场在习近平永无止境的零新冠病毒封锁措施的重压下崩溃。