Gloria Li is determined to discover a job. Graduating final June with a grasp’s diploma in graphic design, she began wanting within the fall, hoping to search out an entry-level place that pays about $1,000 a month in a giant metropolis in central China. The few affords she has gotten are internships that pay $200 to $300 a month, with no advantages.

Over two days in May she messaged greater than 200 recruiters and despatched her résumé to 32 corporations — and lined up precisely two interviews. She mentioned she would take any provide, together with gross sales, which she was reluctant to think about beforehand.

“A decade or so ago, China was thriving and full of opportunities,” she mentioned in a cellphone interview. “Now even if I want to strive for opportunities, I don’t know which direction I should turn to.”

China’s younger individuals are dealing with record-high unemployment because the nation’s restoration from the pandemic is fluttering. They’re struggling professionally and emotionally. Yet the Communist Party and the nation’s prime chief, Xi Jinping, are telling them to cease considering they’re above doing guide work or transferring to the countryside. They ought to be taught to “eat bitterness,” Mr. Xi instructed, utilizing a colloquial expression which means to endure hardships.

Many younger Chinese aren’t shopping for it. They argue that they studied laborious to get a university or graduate faculty diploma solely to discover a shrinking job market, falling pay scale and longer work hours. Now the federal government is telling them to place up with hardships. But for what?

“Asking us to eat bitterness is like a deception, a way of hoping that we will unconditionally dedicate ourselves and undertake tasks that they themselves are unwilling to do,” Ms. Li mentioned.

People like Ms. Li have been lectured by their dad and mom and lecturers concerning the virtues of hardship. Now they’re listening to it from the top of state.

“The countless instances of success in life demonstrate that in one’s youth, choosing to eat bitterness is also choosing to reap rewards,” Mr. Xi was quoted in a front-page article within the official People’s Daily on the Youth Day in May.

The article, about Mr. Xi’s expectations of the younger technology, talked about “eat bitterness” 5 occasions. He has additionally repeatedly urged younger folks to “seek self-inflicted hardships,” utilizing his personal expertise of working within the countryside through the Cultural Revolution.

“Why would he want young people to give up a peaceful and stable life and instead seek suffering?” Cai Shenkun, an unbiased political commentator, wrote in a Twitter post, calling Mr. Xi’s proposal “a contemptuous act toward young people.”

“What kind of intention is behind this?” he requested. “Where does he want to lead the Chinese youth?”

A file 11.6 million faculty graduates are coming into the work power this 12 months, and one in 5 younger folks is unemployed. China’s management is hoping to influence a technology that grew up amid largely rising prosperity to just accept a unique actuality.

The youth unemployment price is a statistic the Chinese Communist Party takes significantly as a result of it believes that idle younger folks might threaten its rule. Mao Zedong despatched greater than 16 million city youths, together with Mr. Xi, to toil within the fields of the countryside through the Cultural Revolution. The return of those jobless younger folks to cities after the Cultural Revolution, partly, pressured the get together to embrace self-employment, or jobs exterior the state deliberate financial system.

Today the get together’s propaganda machine is spinning tales about younger folks making an honest dwelling by delivering meals, recycling garbage, setting up food stalls, and fishing and farming. It’s a type of official gaslighting, making an attempt to deflect accountability from the federal government for its economy-crushing insurance policies like cracking down on the personal sector, imposing unnecessarily harsh Covid restrictions and isolating China’s buying and selling companions.

Many individuals are struggling emotionally. A younger lady in Shanghai named Ms. Zhang, who graduated final 12 months with a grasp’s diploma in metropolis planning, has despatched out 130 résumés and secured no job affords and solely a handful of interviews. Living in a 100-square-foot bed room in a three-bedroom condominium, she barely will get by with a month-to-month earnings of lower than $700 as a part-time tutor.

“At my emotional low point, I wished I were a robot,” she mentioned. “I thought to myself if I didn’t have emotions, I would not feel helpless, powerless and disappointed. I would be able to keep sending out résumés.”

But she realized she shouldn’t be too harsh on herself. The issues are larger than her. She doesn’t purchase into the consuming bitterness speak.

“To ask us to endure hardships is to try to shift focus from the anemic economic growth and the decreasing job opportunities,” mentioned Ms. Zhang, who, like most individuals I interviewed for this column, wished to be recognized with solely her household title due to security considerations. Just a few others wish to be recognized solely with their English names.

The get together’s messaging is efficient with some folks. Guo, a knowledge analyst in Shanghai who has been unemployed since final summer season, mentioned he didn’t wish to blame his joblessness on the pandemic or the Communist Party. He blames his personal lack of luck and skills.

He canceled his on-line video games and music subscriptions. To make ends meet, he delivered meals final December, working 11 to 12 hours a day. In the tip he made just a little over $700 a month. He stop as a result of the work was too bodily exhausting.

In different phrases, he failed in consuming bitterness.

Mr. Xi’s instruction to maneuver to the countryside is equally out of contact with younger folks, in addition to with China’s actuality. In December he told officers “to systematically guide college graduates to rural areas.” On Youth Day a couple of weeks in the past, he responded to a letter by a gaggle of agriculture college students who’re working in rural areas, commending them for “seeking self-inflicted hardships.” The letter, additionally printed on the entrance web page of People’s Daily, triggered discussions about whether or not Mr. Xi would begin a Maoist-style marketing campaign to ship city youths to the countryside.

Such a coverage would devastate the Chinese dream of transferring up socially that many younger folks and their dad and mom maintain dearly.

Wang, a former promoting govt in Kunming in southwestern China, has been unemployed since December 2021 after the pandemic hit his business laborious. He talked to his dad and mom, each farmers, about transferring again to their village and beginning a pig farm. He mentioned they have been vehemently in opposition to the thought.

“They said they spent a lot of money on my education so I wouldn’t become a farmer,” he mentioned.

In the hierarchical Chinese society, guide jobs are regarded down upon. Farming ranks even decrease due to the massive wealth hole between cities and rural areas.

“Women wouldn’t consider to become my girlfriends if they knew that I deliver meals,” Wang mentioned. He would fare even worse within the marriage market if he grew to become a farmer.

It’s apparent to some younger those that Mr. Xi’s proposals for fixing unemployment are backward wanting.

Mr. Xi “talks about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation all the time,” mentioned Steven, who graduated from a prime U.Ok. college with a grasp’s diploma in interactive design and has but to discover a job. “But isn’t the rejuvenation about not everyone engaging in physical labor?” Because of the fast growth of robots and different applied sciences, he mentioned, these jobs are simply replaceable.

Of 13 Chinese graduates from his faculty, the 5 who selected to remain within the West have discovered jobs at Silicon Valley or Wall Street companies. Only three of the eight who returned to China have secured job affords. Steven moved again to China this 12 months to be nearer to his mom.

Now after months of fruitless job searching, he, like nearly each younger employee I interviewed for this column, sees no future for himself in China.

“My best way out,” he mentioned, “is to persuade my parents to let me run away from China.”