One big factor is the real estate sector, which is about 30 percent of GDP. It continues to crater, and at the time of this writing, there is no recovery in sight. Home prices and sales continue to decline. What’s more, Chinese consumers are buying less, with consumer spending making up just 38 percent of GDP. By contrast, that figure is 60–70 percent in developed countries

Not unexpectedly, unemployment among China’s youth (ages 16–24) had been at least 21 percent and likely higher when the CCP stopped publishing unemployment figures in June 2023. Then, in December of that year, the CCP released new statistics from a new method of measuring youth unemployment, which did not include students. That new approach dropped that figure down to 14.9 percent, but that’s still almost three times higher than China’s national rate of 5.1 percent.