2026-09-24
5 分钟The Economist.
Hello, this is Sarah Wu, co-host of Drum Tower, our podcast about China.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've handpicked an article for you from the most recent edition of The Economist.
Hope you enjoy.
Few could have predicted the fallout last month after Xingyu Automotive Lighting,
a big car parts maker in eastern China, decided it had hired too many people over the summer.
The company gave an ultimatum to some 140 fresh graduates who had been employed there for just a few weeks,
either resign with half a month's salary or pick up a screwdriver and take a poorly paid job on the factory floor.
More than 100 chose to leave.
In China, where worker protection laws are feeble, sudden layoffs of this sort are nasty but hardly unheard of.
Yet when the news became public, it sparked an unusual outpouring of outrage.
The People's Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, slammed the company for trampling on society's trust.
Volkswagen, a German carmaker supplied by Xing Yu, said it was investigating the dismissals.
As the pressure built, the company apologized, then fired its head of human resources
and cut some of its executive salaries as an act of contrition.
Why the fuss?
The layoffs tapped into a deep well of public sympathy for China's young people.
They are struggling in a brutal job market that has upended people's expectations of what it takes to succeed in China.
A decade ago, a university degree was still a ticket to a decent career.