According to the German media, China's recent economy has triggered an unprecedented wave of youth unemployment, causing young people to return to their parents and become "stay-at-home children". This phenomenon highlights the pressures of long working hours and a weak job market, forcing many young people to make some unexpected choices.
China's economy has grown rapidly for decades. Wealth is increasing, and more and more families are able to pay for college. However, there is an influx of college graduates into the labor market these days. Many people want to get a well-paid, stable office job, but such a job is not enough.
According to the report, youth unemployment has reached an unprecedented high in China's history. Young and well-educated young people may not have a bright future.
German media have expressed concern about the long working hours in China, which has become a common phenomenon to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. They believe that Chinese sacrifice a lot for work and are willing to neglect friends and family for the sake of work. Long hours and a frustrated job market force young Chinese to make unusual choices.
"Stay-at-home children" have become a special state of affairs for young people in China when they are facing difficulties.
The German press described their lives of shopping, cooking, cleaning, and sending their parents to the doctor. In return, they get a kind of pocket money that resembles a salary. This status caused an uproar on Chinese social media, becoming a hashtag of "full-time daughter" and "full-time son", and sparked heated discussions among millions of users in a short period of time.
"Lying flat" is a response of Chinese young people to a performance-based society.
In particular, the German media emphasized that "lying flat" refers to the reluctance of young people to work too hard, or simply choose to give up regular work in search of a more relaxed lifestyle. The emergence of this trend shows that the younger generation is thinking more calmly about traditional workplace pressures and social expectations.
Becoming a "stay-at-home child" and choosing to "lie flat" is considered a kind of adaptation and rebellion of young people to the current predicament.
In this context, young people are recruited to rural areas, on the one hand, to provide more job opportunities for urban unemployed youth, and on the other hand, it is hoped that they can rejuvenate and modernize rural areas and promote local economic development.
The German media stressed that "lying flat" and becoming "stay-at-home children", although they may be a way for young people to get out of the predicament of unemployment, are not a long-term solution. While rural work offers some opportunities, many young people are reluctant to stay there for long periods of time. They are more inclined to pursue a higher standard of living and higher income, so many will choose to return to the city. As a result, while rural work may be a way out of the unemployment plight for some young people, it is not a long-term solution.
Against this background, the German media believe that young Chinese people are facing great challenges, especially due to the economic downturn in recent years. For the government, it needs to think more deeply about how to solve the employment problem of young people while maintaining high-quality development.