CHINA: The Jobless Generation

Resentment and delinquency among China's urban youth

"Go all out to fight the battle of crash reaping and sowing." There were two reasons for that bellicose injunction, broadcast to peasants in Guangxi and Hubei provinces. One was that after several years of mediocre harvests China's fertile southern provinces are now blessed with bumper crops. The other is that the area's farms and communes are desperately short of labor, because hundreds of thousands of Chinese youths have illegally migrated to big cities in search of better jobs and a more exciting way of life.

Ironically, many of these young men and women were originally dispatched to rural communes because there were not enough jobs for them in the cities. But last year, encouraged by the new liberalization policies of senior Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, venturesome youths began drifting back to the cities. In an attempt to stem the tide, the Shanghai government announced that no youths working on its 35 state farms would be allowed to return home for three more years. Dozens of students on two such state farms in Anhui province reportedly committed suicide in despair. Meanwhile, others have descended on China's largest city illegally. In Shanghai alone there are now an estimated 300,000 youthful returnees, along with 200,000 younger middle-school graduates who have yet to receive job assignments. After a visit to Shanghai and four other cities in eastern China, TIME Hong Kong Correspondent David DeVoss filed the following report on the country's restless, unemployed youth:

For many young people, the day usually starts with a leisurely coffee at the Dong Hai (Eastern Sea) restaurant close to the Bund, Shanghai's main waterfront road. Others start with exercises on parallel bars in the People's Park. By midday boredom sets in. The unemployed pace the banks of the Huangpu (Whangpoo) River or just wander about aimlessly. There is a lot of window-shopping: by men at the new Jinxing television store on Nanjing Avenue, by women at the First Department Store's display of pleated skirts. In neither location are the displayed goods in stock. Other young people simply while away the hours gazing at goldfish from the deck of the Yu Gardens Tea House.

The only real diversion is provided by Shanghai's 65 movie theaters, most of which open at 6:30 a.m. City authorities have allowed that unusually early opening time to draw some of the jobless young people off the streets. The city's current favorite movie star is Charlie Chaplin. When Limelight opened in June, it was to S.R.O. crowds. The film appeared only because Shanghai's Chaplin fans reluctantly allowed Modern Times to close after a six-month run. Another top attraction is Awara, an Indian melodrama about a disaffected youth who becomes a vagabond after being spurned by society. The film is something of a cult classic, particularly for former members of Chairman Mao Tse-tung's rampaging Red Guards, millions of whom were assigned to communes for re-education during the 1966-69 Cultural Revolution.