– China On The Verge: Welfare State Crumbles, Explosion In Social Unrest As Youth Unemployment Soars, Strikes Surge:
In retrospect, it was clear that the bottom was falling out of China’s economy (the real economy, not the fake “as reported” one) last August when shortly after we learned that youth unemployment in the country hit a record 21.3%, Beijing unexpectedly stopped reporting this data entirely, because as Stalin would probably say today if he were still alive, “No data – no problem”!
Since then, largely as a result of Xi Jinping’s insistence not to stimulate the economy no matter the severity of the deterioration, China’s economy has accelerated down its perilous slowdown. And while Wall Street has gladly assumed that Beijing will be able to get away without a forceful stimulus for the foreseeable future even as GDP ticks down from 5% to 4% to 3% to… you get the picture, a far more credible – and unpleasant – argument for a bazooka stimulus is rearing its ugly head: social cohesion is about to crack.
We start where we left off last August, with China’s surging youth unemployment rate. Here, as the South China Morning Post reports, China’s revised youth unemployment surged to 17.2% in July (this would be the equivalent of about 23% according to the old series), the highest level since the National Bureau of Statistics adopted a new method of counting.
* * *
PayPal: Donate in USD
PayPal: Donate in EUR
PayPal: Donate in GBP