A man walks down an alley near a cluster of small factories in Dongguan, China.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Millions of Newly Jobless in China Pose a Looming Threat to Xi
China hasn’t confronted unemployment on this scale since the 1990s.
The Pearl River Delta industrial belt has served as one of China’s most important growth engines since the Communist Party opened the economy four decades ago, propelling its rise to become one of the world’s leading powers.
But now in Guangdong, a southern coastal province that alone would stand as one of Asia’s top five economies, the situation is getting dire in some labor-intensive sectors that are more China’s past than future. In the dank back-alleys of Dongguan, a metropolis with about as many people as New York City, small textile makers are struggling to survive. Thousands of migrant workers have already headed back to China’s poorer interior.