Out of Control! Jiangyou Sparks Nationwide Resistance Movement, Beijing Shaken

The wave of strikes under the dual pressures of economic downturn and mandatory social insurance. Factories go bankrupt and shut down. Workers lose jobs and revolt nationwide. The CCP's worst fear comes true. The Jiangyu incident escalating from bullying ignites a nationwide resistance movement. The people realize who the true enemy is. Mass unemployment crisis sweeps across China, economic downturn deepens. As even attractive and highly educated women struggle to survive in a collapsing job market. Evergrande delisting, a milestone in the complete collapse of China's real estate bubble. 90% of Chinese women regret divorce. So why are divorces rising as marriages decline? UK and US showcase F-35s and conduct carrier drills right under Beijing's nose. You're watching Decoding China, where we bring you timely analysis and grounded perspectives on today's China. The wave of strikes under the dual pressures of economic downturn and mandatory social insurance. Factories go bankrupt and shut down. Workers lose jobs and revolt nationwide. Recently, China's manufacturing sector has experienced an unusual wave of strikes and protests spreading from Hebei to Shanghai, Guangdong and Chongqing. These actions erupted due to unpaid wages, wage cuts, low severance pay and uncompensated factory relocations. Many workers point to the combined pressures of a slowing economy and a soon-to-be-enforced mandatory social insurance policy, which requires employers to pay full contributions for five types of insurance at non-reducible rates, driving people to desperation and heightening social conflicts. In Shijiazhuang, Hebei, on August 6th and 7th, dozens of laid-off employees from Lirenpeng Pharmaceutical Co., Lezhai, a subsidiary of China National Pharmaceutical Group, gathered to protest what they described as the company's broken promises and to demand severance pay. Workers claimed the company had made a written commitment on June 1st to resolve the issue, but reneged a month later, refusing compensation and even demanding that long-serving employees prove their years of service with what workers described as extreme hostility. Another serious case occurred in Guangzhou at Kaiyi Paper Packaging Co., Scharfe-Lillard. On August 8th, the company abruptly announced bankruptcy, the owner went missing, and the factory was left empty. Around 200 workers gathered daily from August 8th to 11th to demand months of unpaid wages. Workers stated that the company earned a monthly profit of $150,000, 240,000 yuan, but new social insurance rules set to take effect in September would require an additional 500,000 yuan in monthly contributions, making collapse inevitable. The so-called mandatory social insurance refers to a requirement for companies to pay five types of social insurance for their employees, pension, medical, unemployment, work-related injury, and maternity, without any reduction in contribution rates. While this measure is officially regarded as an important step to protect workers' rights, it significantly increases labor costs for small and medium-sized enterprises with tight finances and slim profit margins. In Qingyuan, Guangdong, Yijigarmen, Kowlo, Langtide fell into crisis when workers discovered their wages had been slashed by 40% to cover social insurance contributions. On August 7th and 9th, more than 100 workers went on strike twice. We earn 5,000 yuan a month, and after social insurance deductions, we're left with only 3,000 yuan, approximately 418 USD. How can we survive? One worker said, Mr. Liu, a former member of a Shenzhen-based labor rights advocacy group, told the Epoch Times, Many companies were already struggling to survive, and with the added burden of purchasing social insurance for employees, some low-profit businesses simply cannot sustain themselves. On August 8th in Minhang District, Shanghai, hundreds of workers protested what they called the lowest severance package in Shanghai, just 2,040 yuan per year of service. For a worker with 10 years tenure, this amounts to just over 20,000 yuan, approximately 2,800 USD. Last year, the company faced similar unrest when it was accused of wage arrears and covert layoffs, resulting in multiple arrests after workers blocked roads in protest. In Shenzhen, unrest erupted on multiple fronts. On August 11th, employees at Laisong Technology Cometan Link Site in Guangming District demanded clear compensation terms for the plant's relocation to Huizhou and accused the company of secretly moving equipment in advance. That same day, nearly 1,000 employees of Advanced Semiconductor Equipment Co., gathered at the factory gates, protesting the closure announced on August 8th. The company offered only an end payout. One month's salary per year of service. But workers argued that a consistently profitable firm should offer far more generous compensation. Observers warned that this wave of unrest is only the beginning. Laisong, a former journalist and retired university lecturer in mainland China, said, from south to north, factories are shutting down in droves. Unless the government urgently suspends the mandatory social insurance policy, tens of millions of low-income workers will be pushed to the brink. An anonymous labor economist added that, in a sluggish economy, companies already struggling to survive are seeing their cash flow squeezed further by the policy. To stay afloat, they're cutting wages and staff. The number of bankruptcies this year could far exceed last year's. And in 2025, tens of millions of businesses could shut down. Seven major strikes in a single week highlight the intensifying labor management conflict in China's manufacturing sector. With rising labor costs due to policy changes and shrinking market demand, the weakest link, workers, are bearing the heaviest and most direct burden. The CCP's worst fear comes true. The Jiangyu incident escalating from bullying ignites a nationwide resistance movement. The people realize who the true enemy is. The Jiangyu resistance movement, which broke out in early August, has captured the attention of audiences across China and abroad. What began as a local rights defense case has become a stark reflection of China's current social climate. The spark was a brutal attack. A group of teenagers viciously beat a peer at school, and the video quickly went viral. For parents nationwide, the footage struck a nerve. What if that were my child? The bullies brazen boast, I've been in detention a few times, no big deal, laid bare an unspoken truth. In China, with the right connections, you are untouchable. The incident, which started on August 4th, might have remained an ordinary case of school bullying, a common problem in China's schools and society, but the government's arrogance and heavy handedness escalated it into something far larger. Instead of addressing public outrage, authorities denied any wrongdoing and acted with open disdain. The victim's parents, both disabled and illiterate, were tricked by officials and humiliated when they knelt to plead for help. Armed police responded by arresting residents and parading them through the streets in caged vehicles. A move that only deepened public anger. At the grassroots level, local communist party officials' behavior mirrored that of the teenage bullies, wielding power with impunity while ordinary citizens were as powerless as the beaten child. In China's streets, when police gang up on residents, the regime's logic is clear. Power grants immunity, strips away humanity, and worships stability above justice. This is not an isolated moral failing, but the logical outcome of a deeply hierarchical, unequal system. China's education and socialization instilled deference to authority from an early age. Being good means obedience, not equality or mutual respect. In schools, bullying often goes unpunished, especially when the perpetrators have influential family ties. These lessons in impunity carry over into adulthood, where might makes right mutates into institutionalized violence. Fists become batons. Victims shift from classmates to citizens. In Jiangyu, many of the perpetrators came from public security or stability maintenance offices, convinced that their violence was the duty of those who represent the state. Under China's Stability First doctrine, protesters are swiftly branded as troublemakers or foreign forces, stripping them of any legitimacy. Hong Kong's 2019 anti-extradition movement is a telling precedent. Participants reduce to risks to be neutralized. In such an environment, violence isn't shameful. It's rewarded. Officials who suppress dissent are often promoted, echoing CCP Secretary Kai Qi's blunt maxim, deal with the masses with bayonets. The Jiangyu incident has also exposed another volatile layer, economic fragility. Youth unemployment is soaring. The property market is in crisis. Exports have fallen for months. Private business confidence is low and foreign capital is leaving. Across the country, from rural towns to megacities, people are trapped in cycles of hyper-competition, despair and joblessness. The social atmosphere is tinder-dry. Any spark, a demolition, a murder, a heavy-handed enforcement, could ignite widespread unrest. History offers many examples. Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in Tunisia in 2010 ignited the Arab Spring. Strikes at Poland's Dansk shipyard in 1980 birthed solidarity and ended communist rule. Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen protests began with mourning and grew into a nationwide movement. Hong Kong's 2008 Fall of Taos or PAH 2019 protests spread from a single bill to a citywide resistance. All share a common pattern, economic stress plus political rigidity, with public frustration waiting for a trigger. Today's China faces similar structural pressures. The housing crash has shattered middle-class aspirations, youth unemployment has cut off upward mobility, and censorship keeps grievances locked inside a pressure cooker. In such conditions, even a local injustice can escalate into a national indictment of the entire system. The Jiangyu incident may be local, but in an age like this, it could mark a historic pivot. Not because it is unique, but because it landed in the driest possible season. The significance lies less in the fate of a few local officials and more in whether it sparks a broader awakening. History shows democracy is never handed down. It is built through When a society is riddled with cracks and the ground is covered in dry kindling, it doesn't take a grand fire to start a blaze. The day the Chinese people break their silence, those cracks will flare into flames. Every silence today fuels the eruption tomorrow. As Mao Zedong once said, a single spark can start a prairie fire. This, above all, is why the CCP clings so desperately to its machinery of stability maintenance. Mass unemployment crisis sweeps across China, economic downturn deepens, as even attractive and highly educated women struggle to survive in a collapsing job market. I feel like I can't hold on any longer. A university student in Guangdong burst into tears after three months of unsuccessful job hunting since graduation. Her story was filled with frustration. As China's economy continues to decline, the number of college graduates rises each year. On social media platforms like Douyin, WeChat, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, countless young people share emotional posts, often in tears, describing being laid off or struggling to find work. A 35-year-old with a master's degree from a top university said, my wife and I are both unemployed. We used to earn over 50,000 yuan a month, making our 20,000 yuan mortgage manageable. Now, we suddenly have no income. Even after five years as an AI project director, I was laid off following a pay cut. Another job seeker shared, today, I went to three interviews and was rejected each time for being 35. No wife, no kids, no house, no car. I've worked at major tech firms like Bilibili, NetEase, ByteDance, and Kuaishou, but no one cares. Either I get no response or the interview is postponed indefinitely. Many describe the situation as simply desperate. China's unemployment crisis is intensifying. This year, major companies have faced large-scale layoffs. Alibaba cut over 20,000 jobs in the first half of the year, while Tencent has reduced its workforce by 10% since 2022. Multinational companies, including Accenture, IBM, Ericsson, and Cisco, have also implemented job cuts. The number of college graduates has surged from 8.7 million in 2020 to 12.2 million in 2025. The Chinese Communist Party reports an unemployment rate just below 20%, but some experts estimate it could be as high as 50%. Not only recent graduates, but also overseas returnees are struggling. A man from Zhejiang, born in the 1990s, said he had been rejected more than a dozen times since last year despite earning a design degree in New York. Many companies openly refuse to hire anyone over 35, putting this age group in a difficult position. In another case, a man in his 40s from Zhejiang was found crying late at night while wandering the streets. He had two young children and a stay-at-home wife. When his company cut staff, he hid the news from his wife and began job hunting, but faced rejection everywhere. After a long trip for a factory interview, he was told to wait for a response, despite knowing his chances were slim. That night, his wife called to ask for household money, and he promised to send it without revealing the truth. Just a week later, he would have to start paying the mortgage again. Construction projects had stopped and even casual labor jobs were scarce. Delivery or courier work paid just over 3,000 yuan, not enough for a family of four. On WeChat videos, many young jobless people admit they spend their days at Starbucks or libraries to hide their unemployment. A Wuhan University graduate said he pretended to go to work every day by heading to the library at 8 a.m., where seats were scarce. There are so many like me here pretending to work. I don't see it as avoiding reality. It just keeps my routine like I'm still employed. Some call this group of unemployed tech workers in China's cities maintaining appearances in libraries while living off savings. Since Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, first proposed stabilizing employment during his initial term, the CCP leadership has frequently emphasized this goal. However, the continuously growing number of unemployed people across the country proves that China's employment situation is far from stable. Prolonged joblessness, intense competition, and immense survival pressures are causing millions of unemployed individuals to grapple with psychological issues such as anxiety, inferiority, and depression. Ning Shan, a master's graduate in civil engineering, found herself unemployed and struggling to afford meals. In desperation, she turned to live streaming. She jokingly described it as live streaming to earn instant noodle money, saying, if I stream for a day, I can afford to buy instant noodles that same day. Due to her lack of live streaming experience and refusal to sell herself out, her income over several months was extremely limited. She minimized her expenses to the bare minimum, no socializing, no ordering takeout, and relying entirely on discount coupons from online platforms to scrape by. Even so, she could barely sustain a basic livelihood. Against the backdrop of tens of millions of fresh graduates flooding the job market each year, the extent of this involution is staggering. A graduate from a prestigious university with a master's degree is reduced to live streaming to earn instant noodle money. What kind of societal predicament does this reflect? And fresh college graduates haven't even had the chance to knock on the door of employment before it's slammed shut in their faces. This statement precisely captures the plight of China's younger generation. They are trapped in the cracks of history, direct victims of structural unemployment. Their anxiety is not baseless, but rooted in harsh realities. Their silence is not acceptance, but profound powerlessness. Evergrande Delisting, a milestone in the complete collapse of China's real estate bubble. China Evergrande Group, the world's most indebted property developer, has announced it will officially be delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at 9 a.m. on August 25th. The announcement, made on August 12th, marks the end of Evergrande's 16-year presence on the exchange. At the same time, another property firm, Huanan Cheng, has fallen into financial crisis and faces a trading suspension. According to the announcement, Evergrande failed to meet any of the conditions required for trading to resume, with its shares suspended for a prolonged period and unable to resume before the set deadline. The company confirmed it will not appeal the decision. Once the top real estate developer in China enlisted among the world's Fortune Global 500 companies, Evergrande expanded rapidly through high leverage, reaching a market capitalization of $H400 billion. In 2017, founder Xu Jiayin's wealth peaked at $290 billion. However, after a liquidity crisis erupted in 2021, the share price plunged, falling to just HK$16 by January 2024. Experts say this is the first major domino to fall in China's property industry. The liquidation process will put all of Evergrande's real estate assets up for auction, possibly with no reserve price, triggering severe market volatility and the risk of a chain reaction collapse in multiple cities. Following bankruptcy, Evergrande's remaining assets amount to only $255 million, while creditors have filed 187 claims totaling $45 billion. Although asset sales have progressed faster than expected, the recovered amount remains far below the debt total. Numerous banks, financial institutions, suppliers, and tens of thousands of homebuyers face the risk of significant losses, with many overseas creditors constrained by legal barriers that make debt recovery difficult. On August 11, the Hong Kong High Court also ordered the liquidation of Huanancheng, the second largest property bankruptcy after Evergrande. Despite repeated stimulus measures from Beijing, property sales remain sluggish. International analysts forecast that without stronger policy actions, China's real estate recovery will continue to be delayed. 90% of Chinese women regret divorce. So why are divorces rising as marriages decline? In China, divorce and remarriage have become focal points of social debate, as both statistical data and personal stories reveal that up to 90% of women regret their decision to end a marriage. Many attempt reconciliation with their ex-husbands, but reality often proves far less forgiving. One woman in Shandong drew national attention when she stood for six hours under the scorching sun outside her ex-husband's office building, holding a sign apologizing and pleading to remarry for the sake of their child. He never appeared. In another case, a woman divorced her husband to use half the marital assets to help her younger brother buy a house. Years later, when she sought her brother's help, he turned her away. During a video call from her ex-husband, she heard her son say, Mom, I hate you. Why did you leave me? Other kids have both parents. I don't. She broke down in tears. These stories reflect a broader trend. According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, in 2024, about 3.5 million couples divorced, while only 6.1 million married. The divorce rate hit 57.5%, meaning nearly 6 in 10 marriages ended in separation. Women filed for 70-74% of divorces, and most later wished to remarry. Experts note that many breakups are triggered not by irreparable issues, but by accumulated grievances, external interference, or the belief they could trade up. Yet remarriage rarely guarantees happiness. Many women entering a second marriage report greater dissatisfaction, lower-earning husbands, lack of romance, heavy domestic burdens, strained relationships with stepchildren, and in some cases, financial exploitation or domestic violence. Bloggers and marriage counselors warn, if a husband has not committed serious wrongs, works hard, and takes responsibility, divorce should not be rushed. What seems ordinary may later be recognized as invaluable. Children often bear the greatest harm, sometimes facing neglect or emotional distress after a family split. At the same time, younger generations are increasingly reluctant to marry at all. Marriage registrations in 2024 dropped 20% from the previous year, a record low. Contributing factors include unstable incomes, high housing prices, rising child-rearing costs, and workplace environments hostile to women with families. In many Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, homes cost 1.5 to 2 million yuan, while in major cities, prices range from Mortgages can consume more than 40% of monthly income for decades. Raising a single child through college averages 680,000 dollars yuan, excluding healthcare, extracurricular activities, and daily expenses. With two or more children, the burden multiplies. Workplace discrimination further discourages marriage and motherhood. Many employers avoid hiring recently married women without children to avoid potential maternity leave. As a result, increasing numbers of women choose to remain single, prioritizing careers and self-development over marriage and parenting. But economic pressure and lifestyle changes are only part of the story. A deeper cultural shift is at play. Traditional Chinese marriage was rooted in respect, equality, harmony, and responsibility. Values supported by family and community. Since the Chinese Communist Party came to power, especially during the Cultural Revolution, these values have been eroded. Family structures fractured, moral obligations weakened, and utilitarian, individualistic attitudes toward marriage took hold. With the bonds of affection, moral duty, and responsibility worn thin, marriage has become more fragile and divorce more common. Until enduring family values are revived, the cycle of divorce regret will persist, and marriage will continue to lose its place as a cornerstone of Chinese society. UK and US showcase F-35s and conduct carrier drills right under Beijing's nose. Newly released images show that the US Navy, together with NATO allies and Indo-Pacific partners, has conducted a carrier exercise in the Western Pacific, showcasing the power of F-35 stealth fighters right under the nose of the Chinese government. As part of the exercise, US and British Navy F-35Bs carried out flight drills from Japan's new light aircraft carrier JS Kaga, which has not yet been officially equipped with F-35Bs. In June, China's Navy deployed two aircraft carriers east of the US defensive island chain consisting of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, while stepping up Coast Guard patrols near the disputed Senkaku at Yaoyu Islands, and increasing pressure on Taiwan. This has prompted Japan and the US to deepen defense cooperation. The F-35 has three variants, with the F-35B designed for short takeoff and vertical landing, and the F-35C built specifically for large carrier operations. Photos released by the UK Carrier Strike Group show the first ever landing of a British F-35B on the JS Kaga, which was formerly a helicopter carrier and was upgraded in April to operate the fighter. The refit included a heat-resistant flight deck, night operation lighting, and a redesigned bow from trapezoidal to rectangular. In addition to the JS Kaga, the exercise featured the US aircraft carrier USS George Washington, the amphibious assault ship USS America, and the British carrier HMS Prince of Wales, along with at least eight other warships. Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force confirmed the activity, saying it strengthened coordination with allied navies. On August 7th, Japan also received its first batch of F-35Bs. The successful upgrade of JS Kaga paves the way for similar modifications to the JS Izumo, which would give Japan a naval capability unseen since World War II. After the exercise concluded, on Tuesday, HMS Prince of Wales, a British destroyer and a Norwegian frigate arrived at Japan's Yokosuka naval base. Japan's Ministry of Defense stressed that the visit demonstrated the UK and Norway's commitment to peace and stability, amid an increasingly uncertain security environment. Japan's latest defense white paper describes China as the greatest strategic challenge ever, and on August 13, Japan announced it had, for the first time, provided protection of weapons and other equipment for a British carrier strike group, previously extended only to the US and Australia. It remains unclear whether the US, UK, and Japan will conduct additional F-35B exercises in the near future. Your feedback matters. Share your views in the comments. 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