The U.S. imperialist rulers regard the state-capitalist regime in Beijing as the main threat to their ebbing control of the “world order.” Washington is pushing back Beijing’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, trying to isolate it elsewhere and putting together new alliances to counter the Chinese rulers’ growing military power and global ambitions.
Beijing is looking for ways to respond to Washington’s moves, but does so from weakness. It has been unable to reverse a yearslong slowdown in economic growth, while widening class inequality. The crisis facing working people in China is driving them to look for ways to change the worsening conditions they face.
Chinese President Xi Jinping admitted Jan. 31 that China’s economy is “big but not strong,” referring to the disparity between its global clout and its low per capita income — $13,810 a year, well below Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. Over two-thirds of China’s population now live in cities, yet the regime has failed to develop a strong internal market.
The slump in China’s real estate market, which was for decades a driver of economic expansion, is into its fifth year. Local governments, reliant on selling land to developers, are burdened with huge debt. New home sales are at their lowest in 15 years. At the same time, the price of housing is plummeting, forcing many home owners to cut back on spending.
Over decades of rapid state-guided capitalist growth, the Stalinist-molded regime in Beijing policed the industrial working class, holding down wages and enriching foreign and increasingly Chinese bosses.
In Shenzhen Jan. 12, police encircled workers at the Yi Li Sheng factory, who make audio equipment, on their fourth day on strike. Large parts of production were shifted abroad, leaving workers with reduced hours and take-home pay.
“Last month my wages were only 1,900 yuan [$270],” one woman told Sky News. “It’s impossible! How can you survive in Shenzhen on that wage! The factory’s exploitation is unbearable.”
China has a shrinking and aging population with high youth unemployment.
Over 300 million migrant workers, whose labor powered the industrial boom in the cities over previous decades, remain excluded from state benefits like health care and schooling, unless they return home to the countryside.
On the edge of Beijing, 67-year-old Hu Dexi and his wife work 13-hour shifts as cleaners earning 4,000 yuan monthly. “No one can look after us,” Hu told Reuters. “I don’t want to be a burden on my two children and our country isn’t giving us a penny.”
Many of the 100 million workers who migrated from rural areas to work in industries in the cities reach retirement age in China over the next 10 years. They face returning to their village to live off monthly pensions of 123 yuan.
China’s working-age population has been contracting since 2012. In June 2023, the official unemployment rate for youth soared to 21.3% before the government stopped publishing the data.
Youth pay to pretend to work
Unemployed youth can pay for the privilege of pretending to work in special fake offices. Some are graduates who have to “prove” they’ve got an internship before universities will forward them their diplomas.
“What I’m selling isn’t a workstation but the dignity of not being a useless person,” the owner of the Pretend to Work Company in Dongguan told the BBC. He says his business “uses lies to maintain respectability.”
Many young people give up looking for a job altogether.
A popular new app in China is “Are You Dead?” It requires people to click a button every two days to confirm they’re alive, or else your emergency contact is informed. It is aimed at young people, many of whom live alone. There will be up to 200 million one-person households in China by 2030, according to Chinese state media.
Despite China’s huge population of 1.4 billion, only 7.9 million babies were born last year, the lowest since records began. This decline is fueled by high living costs and an aging society, with almost a quarter of the population now over age 60.
China’s population is forecast to fall to around half a billion or less by the end of the century.
These challenges reflect the widening contradictions of the regime in Beijing that rules over the world’s second-largest but deeply stagnant economy.