Wei Wei

Opinion | Don’t doubt China’s resolve to tackle youth unemployment

Recent reports of Xi Jinping telling young people to ‘eat bitterness’ suggests a helpless government asking youth to simply endure. This is far from the truth

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Wei Wei

Published: 5:30am, 10 Jun 2024

China’s youth unemployment has attracted much attention in the West. In reporting the problem, the media unsurprisingly focused on Beijing’s decision to suspend publishing the youth jobless rate after it hit a record high of over 21 per cent in June last year.

When the figure was released again in December, significantly lower at 14.9 per cent, the media pointedly took note – the implication being that it might have been manipulated.

The latest news on the issue concerns President Xi Jinping’s remarks at a recent study session of the full Politburo, where he pledged to make youth employment a top policy priority, stressing that employment for university graduates should be the priority of priorities.

Some Western media are good at creating the illusion of objective reporting, presenting one side of the story as the whole picture. One report on Xi’s remarks, for instance, added that he had previously instructed young people to “eat bitterness”, meaning that they should endure hardship.

This was clearly taken out of context. In a letter in May last year to a group of university students volunteering in a rural revitalisation effort, Xi quoted the Chinese idiom “to look for bitterness to eat” – meaning to actively seek hardship – in order to encourage them.

The key message was about encouraging young people not to be afraid of setbacks and suffering, which can toughen them up. Xi hoped that young people can press on despite the challenges, stay optimistic and find motivation in failure. There is nothing there related to jobs and employment.