The Chinese Communist Party is struggling to inspire the young

“Atree cannot grow sky-high in a greenhouse, and a lazy person cannot accomplish great things,” bellowed the People’s Daily newspaper in a message to Chinese youth. The Communist Party has repeatedly exhorted the young to embrace suffering for the sake of national rejuvenation. China’s president, Xi Jinping, says they should work in the countryside, where rural labour strengthens their sacrificial spirit. His calls for young people to “eat bitterness”, or suffer for a worthy cause, will continue in 2024. But Chinese youths will persist in not doing so.

Mr Xi’s rhetoric has inspired more online mockery than patriotic spirit. Young netizens talk often about “lying flat” and “letting it rot”—youth slang for exhaustion and a desire to quit the tedium of the rat race.

Malaise will spread in 2024 as China’s economy continues to struggle. The urban youth-unemployment rate hit a record high of 21.3% in 2023 before the statistics bureau decided to stop publishing the numbers in August. It is unlikely to improve in the coming year. Some jobless young people have moved back in with their parents, becoming “full-time children”. Many have applied to graduate school to put off job-hunting. When they finish, they will be competing with record-high numbers of graduates (more than 11m in 2023).

Some have sought the “iron rice bowl” of a government position. In 2023 some 2.5m, the highest number in a decade, applied for the civil-service exam. Others are applying for degrees or jobs abroad, or fleeing via smuggling routes through South-East Asia or South America. The UN refugee agency reports growing numbers of Chinese asylum-seekers, with 116,000 in 2022, seven times more than in 2012.

If the state loosened up, it might reinvigorate the youth. But the opposite is more likely. In a year of political uncertainty, bookended by elections in Taiwan and America, the instinct will be to stiffen controls. ■

Alice Su, China correspondent, The Economist, Taipei