china no longer needs enemies the actions of its own youth are enough to annihilate it and helpless CCP can't do anything to stop it the protests they are doing can't even be suppressed the way China did in Teneam because they are destroying their country without even needing to step outside their homes there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction brewing among the young in China a new phenomenon called bailan meaning let it rot in fact this nonviolent movement has turned so deadly for the Chinese economy that the same dictator who used to threaten even more powerful countries is now begging the youth to end this rebellion people exposing the CCP are being vanished the truth is being silenced but it's already too late police flooded the streets to crush a remarkable uprising in major Chinese cities in Shanghai the country's biggest city police arrested protesters dragging them away and if that wasn't enough the CCP is now regretting a policy that could erase China from the map that they themselves implemented 45 years ago the world's most populous country is facing a crisis it does not have young people to man its factories or join its army what exactly are these unique protests what forced them to take up these protests and most importantly how are the CCP policies digging China's own grave the CCP has sensors working overtime in China to delete and censor any posts about this movement i have my suspicions that the CCP's bots have always been disliking any China videos on YouTube in order to suppress it in the algorithm so if you guys can just take a quick second of your time and tap that like button and the subscribe button below it helps me out a lot with the YouTube algorithm especially when covering topics that are exposing the CCP okay let's begin in March of 2022 Bilan a Chinese term gained immense popularity in China so much so that in just 6 months it got more than 91 million views on Chinese app Waybo i mean 91 million views that too in a country like China you can imagine how serious the issue must have been because China generally bans such trends which could pose a threat to the CCP's leadership maybe China dismissed it as just another trend and tried to ignore it but the consequences it started showing later were something no one could have imagined the term bilan translates to let it rot in this movement young people refused to put further efforts into life because they didn't see any hope in doing so many of them have quit their jobs abandoned their families stopped working hard and started accepting being ordinary in fact this wasn't the first such trend in China in 2021 the concept of Tongping which means lying flat was one of the top 10 internet buzzwords in China but the question is how did China end up in this situation although the trend emerged in 2022 the roots of this discontent didn't stem from any overnight event they were the result of a ripple effect from numerous Chinese policies one of which is unemployment to such an insane level where fresh graduates are becoming full-time children quote unquote many jobless youths are literally paying money to pretend to work to hide their situation from family and friends but it all began with the CCP's pathetic decisions november 16th 1993 New Oriental Education a private educational services company was founded in China it started seeing massive success so much so that it even became the largest provider of private educational services in China it even was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006 and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2020 the private tutoring sector was getting established in the 1990s and in a span of a decade like New Oriental some of the biggest players were expanding so quickly they started issuing shares in fact before even getting listed New Oriental in 2004 reported that the size of the education market in China was approximately 580 billion R&B or about $72 billion so the tutoring market was booming and it provided a huge number of jobs estimates even suggested that China's lucrative tutoring industry once employed about 10 million people there's a reason I'm using the word once because what China did to this industry in 2021 shocked the entire world it erased billions of dollars of wealth from the markets listed companies lost 80 to 90% of their value tens of thousands of them lost their jobs and it destroyed an entire 100 billion industry tutoring companies can no longer teach compulsory school subjects teach during school hours nor earn a profit in July of 2021 China banned for-profit tutoring for school curriculum subjects banned subject-based tutoring institutions from listing on stock markets or raising funds although the intention of this move was to lessen the academic burden this sudden move resulted in a huge job loss new oriental education lost 83% of its value in just the first 10 months and even most of the players in the tutoring sector lost almost 90% of their market value in less than a year companies laid off almost 40 to 50% of their staff if we just consider the top seven listed companies 206,000 people lost their jobs in fact these are figures of the listed entities we've not even considered the brickandmortar classrooms and small businesses and this wasn't just with the tutoring sector the CCP also cracked down on the real estate and tech sector since 2021 you can expect the results in 2022 the e-commerce giant Alibaba ended up laying off more than 10,000 employees and Country Garden one of the country's largest property developers fired 30,000 employees similarly even the gaming industry almost got killed by Chinese regulations in 2019 China passed laws limiting minors to less than 1 and a half hours of online gaming on weekdays 3 hours on weekends and no gaming between 10:00 p.m and 8:00 a.m they even capped how much kids could spend on in-game items limiting it to $28 to $57 a month depending on their age then in 2021 China announced new rules limiting under 18 kids to just 3 hours of video gaming per week but this time it went even further and even suspended approvals of new video games for about 8 months as you could imagine the companies took a hit the giants took temporary ones but small studios a permanent one it hit the small players so hard that about 14,000 small studios and video game firms reportedly dregistered in the second half of 2021 on top of that in 2022 Bite Dance and Tencent both laid off 5,500 employees each as sales went down but even after all this chaos China was not satisfied just 2 years later in 2023 China's video games regulator announced new draft rules for online games that triggered a massive sell-off in gaming stocks and because of this knee-jerk reaction the market value of companies like Tencent Netis Billy Billy alone lost over $80 billion in market value on the same day after China's announcement so in an attempt at damage control China began revising its gaming rules now although the intention behind these moves was to combat gaming addiction the way China was doing it was actually pathetic because instead of gradually implementing changes it delivered sudden disruptive blows to the gaming industry this was a big deal because China was and still is the world's largest video game market with 668 million players spending an average of 453 yuan or about $63 each on video games as of 2024 but these sudden shocks were a nightmare for the gaming industry why because the annual growth rate decreased suddenly from 7.28% in 2018 to just 2.5% in 2019 the same year in which China brought in regulations when China did it again in 2021 it came down to just22% from 3.7% in 2020 and as of 2024 it stands at just.9% now just sit back and imagine for a second about the mother who was feeding the family with the income from tutoring the college graduate who just got a job in one of these companies the investors who lost their wealth and the founders who put their blood and sweat and tears into establishing these organizations everything was wiped out in no time now if you were a budding entrepreneur would you feel confident to launch a startup in this environment no right because you never know when your years of hard work would get wiped off in just a few seconds similarly even the employees would feel the same right this is just one of the key factors fueling the dissatisfaction among the youth but this isn't the root cause behind the rebellion you see in 1949 the time when China gained independence it was an extremely poor country so poor that in 1990 it had a staggering 66.3% poverty rate millions died due to starvation and it had a GDP per capita of just $90 but what China did in the next five decades was nothing short of a miracle fast forward to 2024 China GDP per capita grew by 154 times to $13,870 and it's expected to reach $17.5,000 by 2029 yes you heard that right 154 times of growth in fact China even became the second largest economy in the world with a $19.5 trillion GDP and the IMF even projected that China's GDP would reach 27.5 trillion by 2028 on top of that the poverty rate decreased from 66.3% in 1990 to just 3% in 2018 and by 2020 China claimed it had completely eradicated poverty to 0% yeah and I mean when I say that China claimed this because an expert's research not from the US or from Europe but from a Chinese university has indicated that around 65% of the country's population falls below the middle income level that means about 900 million people are living on a low income which the professor defined as earning less than 3,000 yuan or about $412 per month in fact former Chinese leader Lie Kang even stated that 600 million people or around 40% of China's population earns just around a,000 yuan or about $137 per month but anyways what China has achieved in all these years is commendable but who would have imagined that the same hardworking culture would slowly start killing China in the nastiest way during the hard years older generations worked very hard creating a culture of long working hours in China this is why even today the Chinese unofficially work from 9:00 a.m to 900 p p.m for 6 days a week this is known as the 996 work culture in China this translates to 72 hours in a week just for comparison the average working week consists of 40 hours in the US in fact according to China's labor laws a standard workday is still 8 hours long with a maximum of 44 hours a week but they still work almost 28 hours more than the standards part of the reason is this tight competition in the Chinese job market which we'll discuss soon but this culture is so ingrained that a Chinese employee would almost feel left out if they leave before 9:00 p.m this is what the younger generations in China are rejecting the young people have seen other possibilities and they prefer more flexible lifestyles but what if they don't have an option to do so imagine you are working for 12 hours a day 6 days a week ah just like the Chinese people you are fed up but you still can't quit your job in fact according to a Chinese executive Lee Chiang many Chinese businesses even ask employees to work for even 16 hours a day for 6 or seven days a week imagine your health and your relationships getting messed up simply because you can't give enough time for them seems weird right but this is what is the case with so many Chinese youth most of them can't quit this toxic culture even if they want to simply because of one particular reason the harsh truth China has hidden from the world youth unemployment hit another record high in May of 20.8% that's up from 20.4 the prior month in August of 2023 the Chinese government released a shocking piece of data according to which a record high 21.3% of Chinese youth were unemployed even the overall unemployment rate was at 5.1% in December of 2024 seeing these numbers the CCP thought that this is horrible and decided to eradicate such horrible numbers in fact they did by suspending the future publication of the urban youth unemployment rate for 6 months yeah that was the typical Chinese solution for it but when China started publishing it again it was not less than a miracle when it published the latest numbers after 6 months in December of 2023 it dropped significantly to just 14.9% and although it peaked to 18.8% in August of 2024 it became stable at 15.7% as of December 2024 so how did China manage to pull off such a miraculous move actually with a simple trick it simply adopted a methodology to exclude students from December of 2023 so this new methodology does not include university students anymore which simply means the actual unemployment situation might be worse than what the numbers show so China was extremely cautious about the unemployment issue and was taking every measure to hide the issue but at what level this was such a sensitive issue that no one was even allowed to criticize i mean no one's allowed to criticize on any issue in China anyway but this one is actually very disturbing 55-year-old Shu Hong Pong commented on China's slowing economy and questioned Xiinping's leadership but surprisingly he didn't make these remarks in front of a large crowd which obviously no one would dare to but instead he made these remarks in a private WeChat group since then he has vanished since April of 2024 yeah that's the freedom of speech China has and let me tell you Chu Hong Pong wasn't just an average guy he was or I can hopefully say he is a deputy director of the Institute of Economics at a government think tank called the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences or CASS the level of China's frustration could be understood by the fact that Chu is no longer listed on the Cass website and websites related to his work have also been taken offline discussion on unemployment issues remain sensitive on the internet in China and social media platforms a commentary about China's weak consumption unemployment and dispirited youth by a chief economist of China Gao Shawin in 2024 was removed by China's internet sensors also access to Chinese economist Fuang's video social media account was blocked after he commented on China's weaker consumption at a conference but what was so sensitive about their content that China wanted to hide it from people and remember these weren't some normal people they were the top economists so they knew something about the world we don't know but luckily I somehow found a video on what economist Gao said on Chinese social media and even before completing the full video I understood why it was taken down have a look at this but he says this can be summarized into three phrases older people are full of vibrancy younger people are lifeless and middle-aged people have nothing to live for so it's very sobering comments there that we rarely hear in the public discourse in China because this is an environment where we know analysts have been censoring themselves perhaps avoiding using words like deflation because officials have been calling for a more positive narrative around the economy and he goes on to justify his thesis he said that older people are spending because they're getting regular pension but younger people their expectations on income is diminishing so they're holding that back and he also said that the job market is worse than what the official data says he estimates that there are about 47 million migrant laborers who have left the cities gone back to their home provinces because they can't get jobs in the cities and they have basically disappeared from the data because the data only captures unemployment in urban areas so when they left the urban areas they're no longer in the data he also said that GDP is overounted by 3 percentage points a year in the past 3 years cumulatively he said is overcounted by 10 percentage points over the past three years this is based on his analysis analysis comparing growth data versus investment consumption and labor force data yeah you heard that right according to GAO about 47 million migrant laborers who have left the cities gone back to their home provinces because they can't get jobs in the cities have disappeared from the unemployment data because the data only captures unemployment in urban areas so this means that the unemployment data is much worse than what we saw earlier he also mentioned that GDP has been over reported compared to real GDP by 3 percentage points per year over the past 3 years that is from 2021 to 2024 totaling a cumulative overestimation of 10 percentage points and he didn't bring these numbers out of thin air this was based on his analysis comparing growth data versus investment consumption and labor force data he said that older people are full of vibrancy younger people are lifeless and middle-aged people have nothing to live for but why would he say that actually he stated a weird fact that consumption growth is stronger in provinces with older populations and weaker in provinces with younger populations sounds a bit counterintuitive right youtube is growing so fast that it has just overtaken Netflix to become the most popular app on TV and that's just on TVs if you combine TV phone computers and tablets people are spending an insane amount of time watching YouTube this is exactly why YouTube is paying creators about $45,000 per minute that's $64 million every single day so if you ever thought about starting a YouTube channel for yourself well now's kind of the perfect time and if you're looking to learn how people grow on YouTube in 2025 like this guy who just got millions of views in just a few months of starting then we have a solution for you this weekend we are holding a free boot camp for beginners where we share all of our YouTube advice and answer any questions you have about growing a channel on YouTube if you're interested in learning from this boot camp you can sign up now by clicking on the link in the description or by scanning the QR code on the screen but this is because older people are spending more because they are getting regular pensions but younger people are holding back on spending because their expectations on income are diminishing so now you know how sensitive the situation is in China when it comes to employment this is why most of the Chinese youth had no option but to continue with the 996 work culture simply because there aren't enough jobs and they don't have any option but to continue with their existing ones in fact the competition is set to worsen to such an extent that these same Chinese universities which produced 9 million fresh graduates in 2021 11.8 million graduates in 2024 and it's expected to produce a record high 12.22 million graduates in 2025 so the competition is becoming even more ruthless this is the reason why more than 1 in5 young workers are jobless in China now this is also in part due to the bilan movement where most young Chinese people are not willing to accept these jobs with tough working conditions and this has also led to an increase in youth unemployment rates but this is also in part due to there not being enough jobs in the market the situation could worsen to such an extent that according to an economist at the pay king university almost half of all Chinese youth may be jobless now this also includes those who are willingly lying flat but you can imagine how bad the situation could become and the situation is so bad now that fresh graduates are taking up weird and I mean extremely weird jobs like this yeah you heard it right fresh graduates are becoming full-time children where they would spend time with their parents help them with household work and in return get a salary for it as if this wasn't enough to freak me out I found another crazy thing jobless youth are doing in China they are literally paying money to show that they have jobs yeah it's difficult to digest but China has seen the rise of an unusual trend where companies offer pretend to work services to help jobless individuals hide their situation from family and friends for a daily fee of around 31 or about $4 these services provide office space lunch and even fake workstations with computers and phones some providers are even going as far as to offer boss packages where clients can pose in a leather chair and take photos now I tried to correlate the relationship between the lack of jobs the hustle culture and the bilon movement when I studied multiple cases on this the plight of the helpless Chinese youth shook me this is what I found in an interview with CNBC 30-year-old Crystal Gu said that she first became the victim of China's crackdown on the private tutoring system finally after 6 months and a lot of struggle she found another job at a real estate company unfortunately her entire department was laid off in a few months she tried to find another job but this was the time when the tech industry was also reporting layoffs so she finally decided to give up and decided to escape from reality by lying flat to cover her daily expenses or pursue other hobbies she used her free time to take up part-time jobs this is the case with millions of Chinese youth and Dali is the perfect example of this there are tens of thousands of youngsters living in Dali city of Yunan province and for a very good reason dali has attracted a lot of people especially youth who are stressed fed up or thinking differently than the society an entrepreneur named Gao even mentioned that dreamers and dropouts have been moving to Dali for decades but the numbers surged during the pandemic delali with a population of 3.6 million has 100,000 such alternative-minded people and youngsters lying flat are a big part of it you may ask why only Dali because as you can see in this chart the cost of living in Dali is almost a third lower than in China's largest cities even in the rural areas people do as little as possible just to pass the day and repeat the same the next day they are using the bilan movement as a form of escapism but there's another and perhaps stronger reason behind this chia every society has some societal expectation especially from the youth in China it is known as chia which means to establish a family and a career now this also includes buying an apartment in fact buying an apartment is linked to their social status in China so buying property is considered as an achievement amongst the youth but again the prices of homes have risen so much that buying a home in Shanghai and Beijing has become nearly impossible for the average young Chinese person the prices are so high that the average housing prices are almost 12 times more than average incomes in China this is the reason why Chinese youths have refused to fall for this societal pressure simply just because it would be a financial trap for most of them so all these factors combined have dealt a severe blow to the most important thing morale movements like Tongping and Bilan are not just harming Xi Jinping's Chinese dream ideology but would also have a large impact on the Chinese economy have a look at this this is China's labor productivity growth the average for each year comes to almost 7% but after 2021 it has almost dropped to 4% i know there are plenty of other major reasons for it which we will definitely discuss but the growing discontent it's definitely played a role in this even in these charts you can see a decrease in China's consumer confidence index and a sharp drop in China's retail sales this is because unemployment is rising chinese youth are jobless and this is why they are spending less since they will spend less the demand will drop further companies will produce less and as a result either layoffs will take place or a smaller number of jobs will be created this vicious cycle will continue to affect China unless the CCP takes some solid steps to counter this now you might say so what it doesn't matter if the domestic consumption is decreasing china sells to the world and it will continue this trend and keep growing right actually even I was thinking the same until I found this research paper in 1995 only three Chinese firms made it to the Fortune 500 list but as of 2023 this number has increased to a mind-boggling 142 which is the highest for any country now although this is impressive the biggest S so S so S so S so S so S so S so S so S so S so SOES or state-owned enterprises in the list namely one state grid corporation of China two China national petroleum corporation three China petrochemical corporation generated more than 85% of their revenue domestically as of 2018 almost the same is the case even for private companies so the majority of the Chinese companies on the global 500 would be vulnerable to a major slowdown in the domestic economy in In fact China has even started showing signs of a slowdown one of which is so surprising that you won't even believe it in the first place china's economy is suffering from the opposite deflation consumer prices declined in July for the first time in more than 2 years yes you heard that right china is suffering from deflation now you may ask dude the world is suffering from inflation everything is becoming expensive in fact China's consumer prices fell at their fastest pace in 15 years so if things are getting cheaper in China then that's a good sign right well the basic rules of economics is supply and demand if supply increases without a corresponding increase in demand prices fall and vice versa so the reason there's deflation in China is because the demand has decreased significantly this is because people and businesses are not spending much in China the second largest economy is struggling to revive demand this is coming when no other major economy is witnessing deflation as we discussed this would again contribute to the vicious cycle where less demand means less production this means less jobs and ultimately dissatisfaction amongst the youth so while lower prices may seem good for consumers long-term deflation can reduce spending and investment hurting the economy and Trump's latest tariffs on goods from China will hurt the Chinese economy even more but amongst all these problems there is a major problem which is not the economy unemployment or GDP but something even more important and alarming in fact this factor I'm talking about is so crucial that it has broken many countries and is still haunting many countries of the world leaders are trying to find ways to battle what many economists have described as a demographic a ticking time bomb this is none other than the population problem china has been desperately pushing citizens to marry and have children and even offered incentives for the same but still failed even naughty America has failed to make the Chinese naughty but why are they not marrying and how is this killing China you see China has a population of 1.4 billion out of these a whopping 280 million are above the age of 60 so almost 1 in5 are over the age of 60 in China in fact China is now home to the largest population of older people in the world unlike China countries like Japan South Korea and Italy and many other countries are facing this issue but unlike most countries where the major reason behind low fertility rates is higher cost to raise kids in China it's a completely different case youths of other countries did it of their own will but in China it was forced by the government with a draconian policy called the one child policy china's population grew from 540 million in 1949 to 969 million in 1980 although the population was growing rapidly agricultural output in the late 1900s didn't keep up with this pace this simply meant that food production was insufficient to feed the entire population to control these exploding numbers and to avoid hunger rampage across the nation the one child policy was implemented in 1980 although this kept the population in control the consequences of this policy came to haunt China decades later when the aging population was growing at an alarming rate and there were not enough young people to replace them in fact according to a report by 2035 an estimated 400 million people in China will be over the age of 60 which will be almost 30% of the population this is so huge that this would be almost the entire current population of Japan South Korea Italy Canada and Russia all combined in fact even if you look at this chart it shows how the percentage of the 65 plus population has grown significantly from 9.7% in 2013 to 15.4% in 2023 this change would also hit the Chinese economy by 2050 China's public pension spending is expected to make up about 9% of the country's GDP which is still 5.4% as of 2023 to put that into perspective China spent 1.2% 2% of its GDP on defense 2.5% of its GDP on education and 2.68% of its GDP on research and development so now you know how big the burden of pensions is today and how huge it will grow by 2050 but China's one child policy even messed with demographics a lot of them favored having a boy over a girl which led to a drastic mismatch in the maleto-female ratio in China there are almost 35 million more men than women in China which has created multiple social and cultural issues this has made the competition for marriage even more intense much like the job market competition so as the older population increases the economy will go for a toss you might think does that make sense in fact that would be great for them because you just mentioned that unemployment is high so if there would be less youngsters then even the competition would decrease right actually no because the declining population effect can snowball quickly for example Japan reported 20,000 fewer people in 2008 and this figure has since swelled to 831,872 people in 2023 japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kushida even called this trend Japan's gravest crisis even in the case of China a peak population of China was 1.4126 4126 billion in 2021 which started reducing gradually and reached 1.4828 billion as of 2024 which is 4.32 million people less and assuming the annual population growth of.1% as of 2024 stays constant the population of China will be around 1.4 4 billion meaning there will be almost 6.9 million fewer people in China as compared to 2024 the UN even forecasts that China's population will decline to 1.313 billion by 2050 and below 800 million by 2100 but you may have to ask what does population decrease have to do with the economy a research paper says that when the working age population shrinks so do revenues of companies and ultimately the economy of the country this is because a country's workers are its most powerful consumers now I'm not just assuming this we have multiple case studies where a correlation was observed between falling economy and rising older populations japan is a very classic example of the same this chart shows the decline of the working age population in Japan as the country's working age population fell domestic consumption started declining and the number of Japanese firms on the Fortune 500 list started declining as well in fact according to the research paper the correlation between the decline in the working age population and Japanese firms leaving the global 500 was 94% after researching further I found that from 2000 to 2023 the Japanese firms in the Fortune 500 declined from 107 in the year 2000 to just 41 in 2023 this is almost a 62% decline in fact in the 60s and 70s Japan had an average fertility rate of two which has now declined to just 1.3 as of the last decade and according to experts a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman ensures a broadly stable population this even reflects in the GDP growth of Japan if we calculate average GDP growth from 2015 to 2023 it comes to just 6% statista data even predicts that this growth rate will fall to just45% in 2029 similar is the case for South Korea the fertility rate is just around 1.1 10-year GDP growth averages to just around 2.5% and even in this case it is predicted to fall to just 2.03% in 2029 in fact this pattern has been observed for almost every other country with a falling population now you might argue that these countries are growing slow because they have already grown so fast that there's almost no room for growth now partly that is true but still they would have been far better than what they were today in terms of GDP growth if they would have maintained their population the US is a very classic example of this youth population is important because of two very important reasons one declining population means fewer people which results in less demand for goods and services this exerts a downward pressure on prices causing deflation when this happens economic slumps or recessions are more likely this is what China is facing currently declining population affects the supply side of the economy as well as the demand side so generally on the supply side a decline in population results in a reduction of labor supply and production on the demand side declining population results in reduction in the demand of consumption goods and services and housing so the entire domestic market for the goods and services collapses and number two the country is left with fewer workers as more people retire and as we already saw it leads to an imbalance where government revenues from taxes fall while spending on retired people increases so what is China doing to tackle this problem china realized the magnitude of this problem and it decided to finally end the one child policy in 2016 maybe it was too late by then and it had a good reason beginning in early 2016 all families were allowed to have two children the fertility rate in 2016 was 1.67 which improved to 1.69 69 in 2021 but it was still lower than the standard fertility rate of 2.1 this is why the CCP formally passed a law in August of 2021 which allowed married couples to have as many as three children but even after allowing three children the fertility rate reached to just 1.7% this has the same reasons why even the Koreans and the Japanese aren't having enough children why the high cost of child care and education as well as job uncertainty and a slowing economy have discouraged many young Chinese from not only starting a family but also even getting married in fact people not marrying in China has become such a big problem in China that according to the 2023 data first marriages have plummeted by nearly 56% over the past 9 years so to counter this China has set up a nationwide campaign to convince single people to date marry and have children but surprisingly most youths are too busy to date because of the intense competition and leaving young adults in China with no free time to date on top of that gender discrimination and traditional expectations for women to take care of the home discourages a woman from marrying and having children in this case even if Chinese are having children they are concerned whether they would really be able to afford more children or not in fact decades of messaging and policies promoting the idea of having only one child have made many people believe that having just one child is better maybe the situation would have been far better if the CCP wouldn't have implemented this policy or at least implemented something like a twochild policy but now only a miracle can save China from this slow death thanks for watching