Beijing (AsiaNews) - Low wages are a nightmare for China's youth, who are the "one-child" generation and now in an aging society they face the burden of care for their aging parents.
According to data from the online recruitment agency Zhaopin, the average monthly salary of a young first-time college graduate is 6,507 yuan (about 885 euros). Only 10.7 percent of recent college graduates in China manage to get a salary above 10,000 yuan (1,360 euros); 6 percent do not make it to 3,000 (408 euros).
These figures prohibit savings because of the rising costs of living, especially for buying housing in the cities. Moreover, nearly 17 percent of Chinese between 16 and 24 years old are unemployed, the National Bureau of Statistics reports. The figure is three times that of any age group (5.5 percent as of December), and does not include the rural population.
The situation has caused social upheaval. Young Chinese no longer want to work in factories, preferring small jobs to boring and poorly paid employment in manufacturing.
Instead of working on the assembly line, new recruits choose to stay at home, adding to the cost of the family budget. They are the "lying down": young people doing the bare minimum in their jobs or study, tired of the grueling hours of activity, rising consumer costs and prohibitive housing prices. A passive attitude, seen by the Chinese Communist Party as a threat to Xi Jinping's grand plans for "national renewal."
