00:00 Intro
00:00 "I Graduated from College and Now I Work as a Delivery Driver"... 11 Hours a Day for 1.5 Million Won
00:00 "Students Were Excluded"... The Trap of the 15.6% Unemployment Rate
00:00 "It's Already Rotten, So Let It Rot More"... 12.7 Million People Pouring Out
00:00 Why Did Jobs Disappear... Regulations, Mismatches, and US-China Conflicts
00:00 "Xi Jinping Has Become Desperate"... Youth Frustration Shaking the Regime

I am currently on a street in downtown Beijing where many restaurants are clustered. Because it is almost the evening hour when orders flood in, you can easily find delivery drivers waiting in lines like this. Delivery is called 'waimai' in Chinese, and if you look closely, the delivery drivers are wearing colorful clothes. Yellow for Meituan and red for JD. Wearing different clothes depending on the company they belong to, they roam the streets all day long.

1. "I Graduated from College and Now I Work as a Delivery Driver"... 11 Hours a Day for 1.5 Million Won
Among the delivery drivers, many have faces that look youthful even at a glance, so I asked a few of them directly. A mix of full-time and temporary workers, they usually work about 11 hours a day.

#Delivery Youth
(Do you start work at 8 and finish at 7:30 PM?) "There are set commuting hours. There are many delivery drivers, but orders are few, 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 in our terms, or graduated from vocational training high schools to earn money, and their hometown was not Beijing.

In the early days, they could earn 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, they earn about 1.5 million won if they work a full month.

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

Stories of young people who graduated from college and diligently knocked on corporate doors, only to end up doing delivery work because they failed to find good jobs, are frequently uploaded on social media.

#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.' Then another brother said, 'I went to college too. I graduated last year and came out to be a delivery driver this year.' Isn't that a coincidence? Three college graduates (including me) gathered together.

2. "Students Were Excluded"... The Trap of the 15.6% Unemployment Rate
The street scenery of major Chinese cities now serves as a mirror showing the brutal reality of youth employment. Looking at the youth unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 recently announced by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, it is 15.6%. Just looking at this number, 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. This is because Chinese authorities completely excluded students from this statistics. When China's youth unemployment rate soared to a record high of 21.3% in June 2023, it suddenly suspended the announcement of statistics for over two months. After reorganizing the statistics, it resumed announcements by changing the calculation method to exclude students. The Chinese government's explanation is as follows. A student's main duty is studying, and they are not considered true unemployed people in the job market. However, looking at the inner workings, it seems aimed at creating a so-called 'optical illusion effect' that artificially lowers the figure by removing a large number of youths in a state of 'employment suspension'—who delay graduation or go to graduate school because they cannot find jobs—from the statistics. Therefore, estimations continue to emerge that China's actual youth unemployment rate felt by the public is much higher than this.

3. "It's Already Rotten, So Let It Rot More"... 12.7 Million People Pouring Out
Yet, under these circumstances, a record-breaking number of college graduates poured into the labor market this year, reaching a whopping 12.7 million. This means that more new entrants to society than the entire population of Seoul are pouring into the job market all at once every year. The problem is that neither the quality nor the quantity of jobs can accommodate this explosive supply. As a result, terms like 'tangping' and 'bailan' have been trending in Chinese youth society for several years. Tangping literally means lying down and getting by without doing anything diligently, and bailan goes a step further from here. It is a state of extreme indifference or despair, as if the situation is already rotten so let it rot even more. The number of young people who have completely given up is increasing because they feel that even if they work hard, it is difficult to get a good job, buying a house is even more impossible, and upward social mobility is out of the question.

#Job-Seeking Youth
"(During my school days) I asked a lot of questions and thought I would be able to get a job upon graduation. I didn't know I would end up sending out this many resumes. No one wants me."

4. Why Did Jobs Disappear... Regulations, Mismatches, and US-China Conflicts
There are several reasons why China's youth unemployment rate does not drop like this. First, regulations on industries preferred by young people have a significant impact. Much like young people in our country, high-achieving young people in China want to work at big tech IT companies like Alibaba and Tencent. However, after 2020, as the Chinese government tightened regulations in these areas, employment in these sectors, which had contributed greatly to youth employment over the past decade, shrank significantly. In addition, regarding the private education market, China tightened regulations on educational companies to reduce the burden of private education on parents, leaving millions of high-skilled jobs wiped out. I recently heard a story from a parent whose child took 'Gaokao', China's college entrance exam. I heard the private education market has not completely vanished. People are finding ways to do it through the grapevine. However, because they cannot do it openly as before, its scale has drastically shrunk. Second is the so-called 'mismatch'. China is an undeniable manufacturing powerhouse with many jobs related to the field. However, the 12.7 million young people who barely graduated from college do not want to work in 3D industries or factory assembly lines. Even then, as robots are successively introduced into these manufacturing sites, simple tasks are being rapidly replaced. Moreover, due to the sluggish domestic economy and continuous US-China conflicts, companies view the future with uncertainty and conservatively execute new hires, preventing the job pie itself from growing.

5. "Xi Jinping Has Become Desperate"... Youth Frustration Shaking the Regime
Young people's discontent and the employment crisis are critical issues that China can never afford to neglect. In a speech delivered not long ago commemorating the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping made unusually lengthy remarks about the youth. Ordinarily, party founding anniversary speeches are occasions to shed light on national discourses such as the party's great achievements or external security, but President Xi placed a strong emphasis on the word 'youth'.

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

This is underpinned by a sense of crisis that if the frustration of the younger generation, who have lost their jobs and let go of hope, leads to social discontent, it could shake the stability of the Communist Party regime. Ultimately, the image of youth delivery workers driven onto the streets shows that this goes beyond a mere economic issue and is the most urgent and national task that Chinese society as a whole must resolve.

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