The Economist May 28th 2022 China 53Earlier this year Mr Li confirmed that he
would step down as prime minister when
his two terms—the maximum allowed by
China’s constitution—are up next March.
(In 2018 Mr Xi engineered the scrapping of
the twoterm limit on his own concurrent
job as state president, thereby making it
easier for him to stay on as party chief, the
state and party positions normally being
held by the same person.) But Mr Li could
still influence the choice of his successor.
Evidence of a XiLi struggle is thin,
though. Mr Xi remains far more prominent
and very much in charge. State media still
gush about the presidentas well as policies
closely linked to him, such as the zeroco
vid strategy. On May 21st the armed forces
were reminded to include the “two estab
lishes” in their politicaltraining pro
grammes—shorthand for the party’s deci
sion to establish Mr Xi as its core, and his
thought as part of its guiding ideology. On
May 24th state media began serialising
fawning accounts of Mr Xi’s trips around
the country during the past ten years. Chi
na Media Project, a research group in Hong
Kong, notes that occasional absences of Mr
Xi from the front page of the People’s Daily,
the party’s main mouthpiece, are in line
with historical trends.
At times of great stress, such as that
China’s economy is now facing, it is not
unusual for Mr Xi to push others to the
fore. In the early stage of the pandemic, in
January2020,MrLiwasthefirstcentral
leadertovisitthecityofWuhan,whereco
vidwasdiscovered.InAugustlastyearMr
Li, not the president, paid a visit to Zheng
zhouafter flooding killed hundreds in the
city. China’s paramount leaders have a re
cord of working with prime ministers who
cultivate an image of being in tune with
public suffering. Zhou Enlai played such a
role under Mao Zedong. Wen Jiabao did so
under Hu Jintao, Mr Xi’s predecessor. No
obvious power struggles were involved.
There are certainly fewer whiffs of one
today than ten years ago, in the buildup to
the handover of power to Mr Xi at the par
ty’s 18th congress. Early in 2012 a member
of the ruling Politburo, Bo Xilai, was arrest
ed after what officials later described as an
attempt to stage a coup. Months before the
13th congress, in 1987, a struggle between
conservatives and reformers led to the top
pling of a general secretary, Hu Yaobang (a
subordinate of Deng Xiaoping).
The fear that Mr Xi has struck in the bu
reaucracy with his purges and campaigns,
and his stranglehold on the media, would
make it more difficult today to detect such
splits. Inside information about the party
has fewer channels through which to
spread. Even before the pandemic, China
was expelling record numbers of Western
journalists; covid has made it even less ea
ger to issue visas. Mr Xi has not met the
leader of any g7 country facetoface since
the pandemic began. The signals he and
his system are sending may not yet con
vincingly suggest that serious fractures are
forming.Butgiventhesechallenges,asthe
20thcongressapproaches,eventhefaint
estofsignalswillneedcloseattention.nAtimelyreminder
Thousands of documents and photographs shed new light on China’s abuses in the
region of Xinjiang, where it is accused of detaining some 1m Uyghurs and other minor-
ities. The cache includes mugshots of detainees, some as young as 14, and security
protocols that describe a shoot-to-kill policy (after a warning shot) for anyone trying to
escape from the government’s “re-education” camps. The files, which date from 2018,
were reportedly hacked from police computer servers and released by the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington. The leak came as Michelle Bachelet,
the un’s human-rights chief, began a highly choreographed tour of Xinjiang.
UnemploymentStorming the
fortress
M
arriage, according to a French
proverb, is like a fortress besieged.
Those outside want to get in; those inside
want to get out. That thought, immortal
ised in the title of a novel by Qian Zhong
shu from 1947, has more recently been ap
plied to China’s graduate schools. At the
end of last year, a record 4.6m people tried
to storm these fortresses by taking the
postgraduate admissions exam, an in
crease of over 21% from the previous year.
Some of these testtakers may have an
abiding thirst for knowledge. But more
than a few are probably keen to delay their
entry into China’s labour market. The ur
ban unemployment rate for young people
aged 16 to 24 averaged over 14% last year. In
April it rose to 18.2%, its highest level since
the survey began in 2018 (see chart on next
page). Earlier this month Li Keqiang, Chi
na’s prime minister, described the employ
ment situation in China as “complex and
grim”. One of his potential successors, Hu
Chunhua, identified college graduates as a
group of key concern.
This group will be unusually big this
year: 10.8m, about 18% more than in 2021.
Less than half of those wanting to start
work after they graduate have already re
ceived a job offer, according to a survey last
month by Zhaopin, a recruitment firm.
That compares with over 60% at this time
last year. They have also settled for lower
pay. Their average monthly salary was
about 6,500 yuan ($970), compared with
almost 7,400 last year.
Their plight is easy to explain. The in
creased supply of universityleavers has
met faltering demand. The economy is
shrinking thanks to China’s strict “zeroco
vid” policy, which has locked down some
of the besteducated parts of the country,
such as Shanghai and areas ofBeijing. Chi
na’s services sector, which employs many
college graduates, contracted by over 6% in
April, compared with the previous year.
Even before China’s covid lockdowns,
its regulatory crackdowns had inhibited
demand for college graduates. The govern
ment has imposed fines, limits and new
obligations on China’s technology compa
nies. For example, a ninemonth freeze on
new licences for video games damaged
Tencent, China’s most valuable private
firm. It is scheduling layoffs. “Winter is
coming,” says the company’s chief, Pony
Ma, according to Caixin, a magazine.
A bleak season has already arrived forH ONG KONG
Faced with a grim job market, many
youngsters would rather not enter it