China's pessimistic Gen Z poses challenge for Xi post-COVID

 The first weekend after COVID-19 restrictions ended last month, dozens of young Chinese jostled in the dark at a heavy-metal concert in a tiny Shanghai music venue that reeked of sweat and hard liquor.\

It was the kind of freedom young Chinese had demanded in late November in protests against the zero-COVID policy that became the biggest outpouring of public anger in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago.

After three years of lockdowns, testing, economic hardship and isolation, many of China's Generation Z — the 280 million born between 1995 and 2010 — had found a new political voice, repudiating their stereotypes as either nationalist keyboard warriors or apolitical loafers.

Pacifying a generation faced with near-record youth unemployment and some of the slowest economic growth in nearly half a century presents a policymaking challenge for Xi, who is just beginning a precedent-breaking third term. Improving young people's livelihoods without abandoning the country's export-led growth model poses inherent conflicts for a government that prioritises social stability.

This generation is the most pessimistic of all age groups in China, surveys show. While the protests succeeded in hastening the end of COVID curbs, the hurdles Chinese youth face in achieving better living standards will be harder to overcome, some analysts say.

"As the road ahead for the youth gets narrower and tougher, their hopes for the future evaporate," said Wu Qiang, a former politics lecturer at Tsinghua University who is now an independent commentator in Beijing. Young people no longer had "blind confidence and adulation" towards China's leaders, he added.

Some Chinese youth who spoke to Reuters reflected the sense of frustration.

"If they didn't change the policy, then more people would protest, so they had to change," said 26-year-old Alex, who declined to give her last name for fear of retribution from the authorities, in an interview before the Shanghai concert.

https://sports.yahoo.com/chinas-pessimistic-gen-z-poses-010505209.html