Near record high levels of youth unemployment in China is prompting more young graduates to look abroad for work, particularly in Africa. Recruiters say they can’t find enough people to work in both private companies and Chinese state-owned enterprises as translators, accountants, and other administrative roles.
While moving so far away from home isn’t ideal for a lot of young people, it’s also hard to resist the higher salaries, generous benefits, and the adventure of living overseas, according to freelance journalist Li Yijuan for a story she wrote last month on this trend for the English-language Chinese news site Sixth Tone.
Yijuan, herself a soon-to-be young graduate, joins Eric & Cobus from the eastern Algerian city of Amenas to discuss her own experience and why Africa is becoming a popular destination for young Chinese professionals.
Show Notes:
- Sixth Tone: With Jobs at Home Scarce, Young Chinese Are Heading to Africa by Li Yijuan
- CNN: 1 in 5 of China’s urban youth are unemployed. That’s a huge headache for Xi Jinping by Laura He
- FRANCE 24: ‘I feel like I’ve been abandoned by the world’: Chinese youth hit by record unemployment by Yena Lee
About Li Yijuan:
Li Yijuan is a writer and a journalist. Her passions include cross-cultural dynamics, the ills of modernity, collective trauma, and weird food. But most of the time, she just writes fiction and nonfiction about everything she encounters or is about to encounter.
