China recently released the Several Measures for Further Strengthening the Cultivation and Management of Young Sci-Tech Talents (hereafter referred to as the Measures). China vows to “achieve success in high-standard self-reliance in science and technology and in the practice of invigorating China through science and technology and the workforce development strategy.” The Measures will also empower “young people to devote their youth and wisdom to the process of advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through Chinese modernization.” China’s efforts can be seen as striving to solve two difficulties: youth unemployment and international technological containment. However, more problems may surface as a result.
The first problem is youth unemployment. China has rolled out various subsidizing policies and plans to hire college graduates for community-level posts in agriculture, education, health care and poverty relief. However, the youth unemployment rate keeps increasing as China’s economic recovery fails to meet expectations. The rate climbed to a new record high of 20.8 percent in May and rose further to 21.3 percent in June. If adding the tens of millions of young people lying flat or not in education, employment or training (NEET) to the number of unemployed youths, China’s youth unemployment rate may be as high as nearly 50 percent, much higher than official statistics. The National Bureau of Statistics of China announced that it would suspend disclosing the youth unemployment rate on August 15th, generating ridicule that the bureau is wearing an eye mask and pretends it cannot see. And lying-flat mindset has become universal among China's youths.
Therefore, the Measures put forward many incentives for young people. For example, the percentage of persons in charge and cadres that are under 40 years of age must be no lower than 50 percent in major national scientific and technological tasks and critical core technologies. The scale of funding provided by the National Natural Science Fund to young technological talents must be over 45 percent. China also lowers the age limit of persons in charge applying for the Young Scientist Project under China’s National Key Research and Development Program to 40 and removes the requirement of position and educational qualifications. The percentage of research programs of National Technological Innovation Base chaired by people under 40 years of age must be higher than 60 percent. Scientific research funding for young people under 35 years of age must be accounted for 50 percent or higher of annual budget. The number of papers and post titles of talents will not be used as indicators for the performance evaluation of institutions. The Measures even stipulate that the time for social events or non-academic activities cannot exceed one day or 20 percent of time per week for young technological talents.
The above incentives for young people reveal the malpractice in China’s scientific and technological organizations, including aging personnel, extreme formality in the performance evaluation of institutions and excessive social events or non-academic activities. In addition, China has a track record of fabricating achievements and statistics. In the case of startup bases for young Taiwanese, local governments, in view of their performance in united front work, were acquiescent to fake entrepreneurs and startup brokers’ receiving subsidies without really starting up new businesses. It is conceivable that many fake programs headed by young people will emerge as local governments strive to meet the performance indicators in the Measures. Moreover, allowing young people to take charge of projects under the National Key Research and Development Program without the requirement of educational and position qualifications will create opportunities for malpractice. China’s financial support for young people may fail to help them and create a group of brokers instead. This will generate more discontent among young people as the funding is close enough to see but just out of reach.
Secondly, the international community led by the U.S. has launched a trade war and a technological war against China in recent years. This development has indeed dealt a severe blow to China’s economic and technological prospects. Sanctioned by the U.S. and at one time retreating from the smartphone market, Huawei recently launched a flagship smartphone, trying to demonstrate a breakthrough in the face of the U.S. chip ban. However, Huawei’s recent move is still being questioned as being more declaratory than substantive. Wafer yield and output are limited, and it is difficult to deliver a large supply. China tries to make breakthroughs in bottleneck technologies. Xi Jinping repeatedly emphasizes technological self-reliance. The release of the Measures highlights that China places its hope of technological development on the young generation. However, it also reveals problems of fabrication, plagiarism and overhyping related to science and technology in China. Beijing is well aware that the development of technological self-reliance depends on investing massive resources on education and industries over a long period of time. Indeed, China has put a huge amount of resources in research and development in recent years. China’s spending on research and development broke the mark of 3 trillion yuan for the first time in 2022. However, many factors will constrain China’s technological innovation, including barrier of regulation, inadequate protection of intellectual property rights, low efficiency of public funds and insufficient participation of the private sector.
In conclusion, whether the Measures will solve the problems of youth unemployment and international technological containment is still an open question. More negative effects may occur as a result. Attention should be paid to future development.
（Huang Yiwei, Researcher of the Association of Strategic Foresight）
(Translated to English by Cindy Li)
