2024-10-03
10 分钟The Economist Hello, this is Alice Su, co-host of Drum Tower, our weekly podcast on China.
We've chosen an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
Please do have a listen.
The term three generations in tobacco has become a common shorthand in China.
On social media, it means a privileged elite whose members hand out coveted jobs,
such as managerial roles in the state's tobacco monopoly, to their own types.
Earlier this year, a microblogger with more than 850,000 followers invoked the meme.
The result of this hereditary system is a closed circle of power that completely cuts off opportunities for people at the bottom to rise up,
he wrote.
Hundreds expressed agreement.
The ruling class is solidifying, one replied.
Another fumed,
the children of the elite get ahead and the children of the poor remain poor.
In the 1990s as people became free to move from the countryside into cities and to choose what work to do,
social mobility soared.
With hard work and native wit,
the transformation from farmer to factory owner could be completed in a matter of years.
But as the meme suggests, optimism is beginning to fade.
The economy is faltering.
Opportunities for good jobs are drying up.