Some people continue to consider China a communist country, with the Communist Party of China at the helm, which therefore leads to a bright future. From the recent achievements of the builders of communism, we unexpectedly see a record drop in the birth rate in China and an increase in youth unemployment. Is this the future we want to build?
Let's consider the specifics of Chinese socialism in more detail.
Problems with finding a job are already experienced by 21.3% of young Chinese citizens between the ages of 16 and 24, as of July 2023. Earlier, in May, this indicator was 20.4%. [1]
The problem of employment among young Chinese citizens has been observed since the beginning of 2023 and naturally leads to an increase in discontent. At the same time, the overall unemployment rate in China is 5.3% (about 80 million people), and the country's GDP continues to grow gradually after the abolition of coronavirus restrictions. This allows the authorities to declare that the economy is steadily recovering, which is an outright manipulation, because since 2019 the pace of industrial production has been slowing down and growth is due to the so-called low base.
If young people cannot find a job, then the Chinese economy does not need them now to build communism.
What was the situation with unemployment in another country building communism - the USSR?
In 1928, on the eve of the first Soviet five-year plan, according to official data of the then labor exchanges, there were 1,365,000 unemployed in the USSR with a population of 148 million people (0.9% unemployed). By the beginning of the first five-year plan in 1929, this number had decreased to 1,242,000 people. On October 1, 1930, the number of unemployed was reduced to 240,000 people. At the beginning of 1930, according to the official historiography of the USSR, the Soviet country managed "for the first time in the history of mankind to eliminate unemployment as a socio-economic phenomenon" - on March 13, 1930, the last referral to work at the Moscow Labor Exchange was issued to a locksmith Mikhail Shkunov. The Moscow Labor Exchange has closed. Unemployment in the USSR was eliminated. The Soviet worker was deprived of the fear of losing his job, and after that the loss of livelihood, students were interning at their future jobs, gaining the necessary skills and a clear future.
This was achieved by the system of distributing students to enterprises, labor exchanges, employment guarantees from the state and taxes on parasitism.
How do they cope with the problem of unemployment after 90 years in “communist” China?
After reports of an increase in youth unemployment, China ceased providing data on it. [2]
It’s very “progressive” at least, probably in the near future the calculation method will be changed and the problem will be solved in subsequent statistical reports.
However, in reality, the problem will not go away and at least it will be able to determine the problem by another indicator - by the birth rate.
Every fifth young Chinese cannot find a job, so how to create a family for the next generation that will continue the work of building communism?
At the moment, the fertility rate in China is one of the lowest in the world with 1.09 children per woman. For comparison, in Russia this coefficient is equal to 1.14 children per woman, the USA - 1.7, Germany - 1.53, France - 1.8. For simple reproduction of the population, at least 2.1 children per woman are needed.
The German newspaper Spiegel attributes the decline in the birth rate to the high cost of child care. Women simply cannot afford to give birth. It is reported that in the special administrative regions of China, the number of childless women doubled in the period 2017-2022.[3]
The growth of unemployment, the anti-social policy of socialism with Chinese characteristics show us that China is an absolutely capitalist country, where the main goal is not the growth of satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of society, but profit. The experience of building socialism in the USSR shows what an important task was in the victory of unemployment and, moreover, shows the ways to solve it. But capitalism needs an army of unemployed people to increase exploitation, lower wages, increase the working week, increase production plans, even if this means poverty and death for millions of citizens of their own country. The only way out is to make the transition to the construction of socialism, where there will be no exploitation of man by man and the pursuit of profit, and instead there will be comradely mutual assistance and public ownership of the means of production.
Sources: 1, 2, 3