2023-10-01 11:30:52
Record youth unemployment, a weak economy, real estate crisis: the difficult economic situation is causing many Chinese to try their luck in the lottery. Ticket sales reached a one-year high in August, the official Xinhua news agency reported over the weekend, citing Finance Ministry data.
Accordingly, nationwide sales of lottery tickets shot up by 53.6 percent compared to the same month last year to 52.96 billion yuan, or the equivalent of almost 7 billion euros. In the first eight months, 375.76 billion yuan worth of lots were sold, an increase of 51.6 percent.
Youth unemployment is high
The rising lottery sales coincide with months of mostly weak economic data. The youth unemployment rate reached a record high of 21.3 percent in June. Commentators on social media see a connection in this. “The worse the economy is, the more lottery tickets are sold,” wrote one user on the popular Chinese microblog Weibo. “Young people are more likely to win 5 million yuan in the lottery than to earn 5 million through work,” wrote another.
The statistics office abruptly stopped publishing youth unemployment data in August. Official reason: The data collection methodology should be “optimized”. This sparked a wave of criticism on social media. Pressured by rising housing costs and a slower-than-expected growing economy, many unemployed college graduates have left cities that have traditionally been a springboard to prosperity. Earlier this year, social media was flooded with videos of unemployed graduates visiting temples to seek blessings from the gods.
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The People’s Republic is also suffering from a real estate crisis; many apartments have lost value. The real estate market has been an important economic driver for years. However, it has been sliding from one crisis to the next since mid-2020. One reason: The supervisory authorities have intervened to reduce the developers’ high level of debt. Many projects were therefore stopped. In the first eight months of the year, property sales by area fell 23 percent compared to the same period last year, indicating continued weak demand.
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