Interesting events relating to my readings as of late – yesterday’s Yangtze River Times featured a frontpage article titled “China’s next year GDP growth rate will be above 9%.” This is coming up all over the place – the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently released a ‘blue book’ claiming that although China will “be influenced” by the global crisis, GDP growth should exceed pessimistic expectations (7%, the point at which growth is estimated not to support enough jobs for the expected expansion of the labor force, assuming no increase in unemployment.) 

In Marxist class yesterday my professor mentioned that ‘growth was slowing – maybe even 7%’ and ‘now is a very difficult time to find jobs for [university] graduates.’ A furious discussion immediately broke out, with students attempting to correct him that ‘growth would be at least 9%! It was in the papers this morning!’

The very same students earlier admitted that ‘most of the newspapers here are just tabloids.’ Still – the process of mutual delusion is important to security. Even more ominously, the very same paper also features a short story (‘Supporting Migrant Workers Job Search after returning Home’) on how the number of reverse-migrants is increasing rapidly in cities like Wuhan, and it’s become a priority to help them find meaningful employment in the countryside. According to the article, 20,000 migrants have already left Wuhan. Here’s a Wall Street Journal article on the same topic (China Fears Restive Migrants as Jobs Disappear in Cities):

Between 80 million and 100 million rural residents are either completely landless or don’t have access to enough land for subsistence, estimates Joshua Muldavin, professor of geography and Asian studies at Sarah Lawrence College. “The increases right now with the large-scale return of peasants could add tens of millions to that,” he says. “Its importance can’t be exaggerated in China and internationally.”

Link from Baseline Scenario, which also features a good roundup of information on general topic of China’s decline.