Chinese Influencer Sparks Outrage by Mocking Jobless Youth

If there is one thing that young Chinese do not have a sense of humor about these days, it’s the state of the job market.

The influencer Yangmaoyue has learned that lesson the hard way in recent days, after his ill-conceived quip about youth unemployment backfired in spectacular fashion, leading him to lose over 1 million followers and receive a torrent of online abuse.

Yangmaoyue, whose real name is Yang Yue, has become a popular figure on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, attracting over 8 million followers with videos showcasing his glamorous lifestyle as a graduate of the elite Peking University.

Confident and outspoken, Yang has never been afraid to court controversy — he has repeatedly faced criticism for flaunting his privilege and wealth in the past.

But nothing could have prepared the online star for the furious reaction to his comments last week, when he decided to give his two cents on the struggles faced by China’s unemployed graduates.

Yang began by asking in a playful tone: “Is it really that hard to find a job?” Then, he mocked the generation born after 2000, known as post-00s in China, questioning their reputation for being fearless social justice warriors.

“Aren’t the post-00s supposed to be cleaning up toxic workplace cultures? How come you can’t even enter the workforce?” he quipped.

Young Chinese were not amused. The country’s youth unemployment rate was recorded at 17.1% in October. Many jobless Gen-Zers found Yang’s suggestion that they weren’t trying hard enough to find work highly offensive — especially given that the influencer has never had to apply for a job himself.

Yang began growing his following on social media while still a student at Peking University, and became a full-time influencer after he completed his master’s degree in 2021.

The backlash against Yang was swift and vicious. Within days, he had lost more than 1 million followers on Douyin. Furious comments about him flooded the microblogging platform Weibo, with a related hashtag racking up more than 180 million views.

Many commenters compared Yang to Emperor Hui, the 3rd-century Chinese ruler who famously asked, “Why don’t they eat meat?” when his advisors informed him that his subjects had no rice to eat.

Like Marie Antoinette, Emperor Hui has become a byword in China for a clueless member of a privileged elite, who doesn’t understand the realities faced by ordinary people.

Yang tried to quell the outrage, deleting his original video and posting an effusive apology to his account over the weekend.

“I’m sorry for expressing myself inappropriately on such a serious topic,” he said. “I sincerely apologize for hurting people’s feelings and making an already difficult job-hunting season even harder.”

But the damage had already been done. The controversy has continued to snowball this week, with more and more young people taking to social media to share accounts of the difficulties they are facing.

Zhao Yue, a 24-year-old journalism graduate, said Yang’s comments were completely off the mark.

“It’s fine for Yang to joke around, but it should be done with a sense of perspective,” she said. “It shouldn’t be so out of touch with reality.”

According to Zhao, young people are already primed to beat themselves up for failing to find a job — many have been raised in an ultra-competitive education system that constantly pressures them to push themselves to succeed.

“We’ve been poisoned by the ‘good student mentality’ for too long — constantly questioning if we’re good enough,” Zhao said. “But I’ve stopped blaming myself for the flaws in the environment.”

The Chinese government has made reducing youth unemployment an urgent priority in recent months, as an economic slowdown leads many employers to cut back on hiring fresh graduates.

This year, an estimated 12.2 million people completed degrees in China, up from 8.2 million in 2018, the year Yang finished his bachelor’s degree.

The central government recently outlined a string of measures designed to boost the job market, including having universities scrap programs with “low employment quality” and requiring companies to offer staff more training.

(Header image: A screenshot shows Yangmaoyue in the trending video. From Weibo)