00:00 Intro
00:30 "Graduated College, Now Delivering Food"... 1.5 Million Won for 11 Hours a Day
02:18 "Students Excluded"... The Trap of the 15.6% Unemployment Rate
03:24 "It's Already Rotten, So Let It Rot More"... The Flood of 12.7 Million Graduates
04:39 Why Did the Jobs Disappear... Regulations, Mismatches, and U.S.-China Conflict
06:14 "Xi Jinping Has Grown Desperate"... Youth Frustration Shaking the Regime

I am currently standing on a street in downtown Beijing where many restaurants are clustered. As it is nearing the evening dinner rush when orders surge, you can easily find delivery riders lined up like this. Delivery is called 'waimai' in Chinese, and if you look closely, the delivery riders are wearing colorful clothes. Yellow for Meituan, red for JD.com. Wearing the uniforms of their respective companies, they roam the streets all day long.

1. "Graduated College, Now Delivering Food"... 1.5 Million Won for 11 Hours a Day
Among the delivery riders, many had young-looking faces at a glance, so I asked a few of them directly. A mix of regular and temporary workers, they typically worked about 11 hours a day.

#Delivery Youth
(Do you start at 8 and finish at 7:30 PM?) "There are set commuting hours. There are many delivery riders, but few orders, so it's not easy. Everything is harder because of the social environment."

The young people I met were mostly those who had just graduated from middle school or vocational high schools in our terms and came out to make money, and their hometowns were not Beijing.

#Delivery Youth
(Why did you come to Beijing?) "Because I can make money. Beijing is the place where you can make the most money in the north."

In the early days, they could make around 3 million won in our money a month, but now, due to fierce competition and a drop in delivery orders caused by the economic downturn, working a full month earns them about 1.5 million won.

#Delivery Youth
"I deliver about 40 items a day. (How much do you earn per delivery?) It's about 1,100 to 1,200 won."

Stories often pop up on social media about young people who graduated from college, knocked diligently on corporate doors, but failed to secure good jobs and thus turned to delivery work.

#Delivery Youth
(An older brother from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) said, 'Do you know what school I graduated from? I graduated from Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics.' So another older brother said, 'I graduated from college too. I graduated last year and came out to be a delivery rider this year.' Isn't that ironic? Three college graduates (including me) gathered together.

2. "Students Excluded"... The Trap of the 15.6% Unemployment Rate
The street scenery in major Chinese cities right now is a mirror showing the brutal reality of youth employment. Looking at the youth unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 recently announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics, it stands at 15.6%. Looking at this number alone, it is easy to be misled into thinking that it has dropped somewhat compared to the past when it exceeded 20%. However, there is a huge trap in this figure. That is because Chinese authorities completely excluded students from this statistic. When youth unemployment soared to a record high of 21.3% in June 2023, China abruptly suspended the publication of statistics for over two months. After statistical revisions, they resumed publication by changing the calculation method to exclude students. The Chinese government's explanation is this: a student's primary duty is studying, and they are not considered true unemployed persons in the job market. However, looking at the real intent, by excluding a large number of young people in a state of 'employment suspension'—who delay graduation or enter graduate school because they cannot find jobs—from the statistics, they appear to be aiming for a so-called 'illusion effect' that artificially lowers the figure. Therefore, estimations continue to emerge that China's actual perceived youth unemployment rate is much higher than this.

3. "It's Already Rotten, So Let It Rot More"... The Flood of 12.7 Million Graduates
Yet, under these circumstances, a record-high number of college graduates poured into the labor market this year. A staggering 12.7 million. Ever since breaking the 10 million mark for the first time in 2022, record highs have been broken every year. This means that a number of fresh graduates greater than the entire population of Seoul are flooding into the employment market all at once every year. The problem is that neither the quality nor the quantity of jobs can absorb this explosive supply. As a result, terms like 'tangping' (lying flat) and 'bailan' (let it rot) have been trending in Chinese youth society for several years. Tangping literally means living by lying down without doing anything hard, and bailan goes one step further. It is a state of extreme indifference or self-abandonment, as if saying the situation is already rotten so let it rot even more. An increasing number of young people have completely given up, feeling that even if they work hard it is difficult to get a good job, buying a home is even harder, and social ascension or class mobility is impossible.

#Job-Seeking Youth
"(During school days) I asked a lot of questions and thought I could get a job upon graduation. I never imagined I would send out this many resumes. Nobody wants me."

4. Why Did the Jobs Disappear... Regulations, Mismatches, and U.S.-China Conflict
There are several reasons why China's youth unemployment rate refuses to drop. First, regulations targeting industries favored by young people have had a major impact. Much like young people in our country, highly educated young Chinese want jobs in big tech IT companies like Alibaba and Tencent. However, after the Chinese government tightened regulations on these sectors starting in 2020, employment in these fields—which had made a huge contribution to youth employment over the past decade—shrank significantly. In addition, China tightened regulations on educational companies in the private tutoring market to ease parents' private education burdens, wiping out millions of high-skilled jobs. I recently spoke with a parent whose child took 'Gaokao', China's college entrance exam. I was told that the private tutoring market hasn't entirely vanished; people are still finding ways through under-the-table connections. However, because it cannot be done openly as before, its scale has drastically decreased. The second reason is the so-called 'mismatch'. China is a bona fide manufacturing powerhouse with many jobs in related fields. However, the 12 million young people who worked hard to graduate from college do not want to work in 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) jobs or factory assembly lines. Even then, as robots are successively introduced to these manufacturing sites, simple tasks are being rapidly replaced. Coupled with this, because enterprises view the future uncertainly due to the domestic economic slump and persistent U.S.-China conflicts, they are conservative in new hiring, preventing the job pie itself from growing.

5. "Xi Jinping Has Grown Desperate"... Youth Frustration Shaking the Regime
The discontent of young people and the employment crisis are critical issues that China can never afford to ignore. In a speech commemorating the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China not long ago, President Xi Jinping made unusually lengthy remarks about the youth. Party founding anniversary speeches usually outline national discourses such as the party's great achievements or foreign security, but President Xi placed a strong emphasis on the word 'youth'.

#Xi Jinping / Chinese President
"The youth are the main force in realizing the great rejuvenation of China. The entire party must attach importance to the youth, care for the youth, and support the youth. We must create conditions to help young people grow and cultivate them into talents."

This reflects an underlying sense of crisis that if the frustration of young people who lost their jobs and gave up hope leads to social discontent, it could shake the stability of the Communist Party's regime. Ultimately, the image of young delivery workers driven onto the streets shows that this transcends a mere economic issue and is the most urgent national task that Chinese society as a whole must resolve.

(Reported by Choi Go-un | Produced by Kim Su-hyung | Filmed by Choi Deok-hyun | Video Edited by Hong Jin-young | Designed by Ahn Hye-min | Produced by SBS Digital News)