China's unemployment among young people could be headed for levels last seen more than three years ago, as a record number of graduates prepare to enter the labor market at a time when AI is threatening to displace more entry-level jobs.

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Surveyed unemployment in urban areas for those aged 16-24 came in at 14.9% last month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics this week. While extending a pattern of seasonal decline, it was the highest for June since the government excluded university students from the sample more than two years ago after the rate surpassed 20%.

Youth joblessness typically bottoms out in June before spiking later in the summer as more graduates join the labor market. An unprecedented 12.7 million of students are set to enter the workforce this year, according to the Ministry of Education, an increase of nearly 4% from 2025.

Zhaopeng Xing, an economist with Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, expects youth unemployment to approach 20% in the next two months as a labor "oversupply" worsens. "Employment pressure is still growing due to both cyclical and structural challenges," said Xing, pointing to factors such as weak domestic demand and the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

The bleak job prospects facing China's youth crystallize the challenge ahead for officials after economic growth weakened more than expected in the second quarter to below Beijing's annual target. With consumption and investment remaining sluggish, the spread of AI is ushering in a transformation that Citigroup Inc. predicts could eventually threaten to displace an estimated 70 million workers in China.

China's AI adoption rate is the highest in Asia and above that for the US, according to analysts at HSBC Holdings Plc.

Employment is a politically sensitive issue and maintaining social stability is a priority for China's leadership. Meanwhile, pressures in the labor market are becoming more widespread, even as the overall urban unemployment rate slipped slightly to 5% in June, matching the lowest in a year.

The reading for the employment component of China's official manufacturing purchasing managers' index worsened last month, extending a streak of contraction that began in March 2023. An index of future hiring plans fell in June to a nine-month low, according to results of a poll of mostly private companies surveyed by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

Outlays from the unemployment insurance fund, which helps retrain those laid off and pays part of their salaries, jumped to 88.1 billion yuan ($13 billion) in January-May, on par with its expenditures during the pandemic in 2020.

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"China's economy entered the third quarter on a weak footing after sluggish second-quarter growth, reinforcing the case for stronger policy support to meet the annual growth target. High-frequency indicators through July 10 point to soft domestic demand, which could be weighing on production."

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As the economic pain builds, the authorities have come under pressure to ramp up stimulus. But for now, many analysts expect them to deliver additional aid only if the situation deteriorates further, opting instead to accelerate the implementation of measures already in the pipeline.

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Iran's foreign ministry warned on Monday of "unforeseen" consequences following Ukraine's attack on an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea over the weekend. "This action by Ukraine was an absolutely illegal and unjustified act, contrary to the Charter of the United Nations, as well as a dangerous act of adventurism that will certainly not go unanswered by us," the ministry's spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a weekly press briefing. The consequences of Ukraine's action "will certainly be unforeseen," he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Kyiv had carried out long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea against vessels transporting military cargo involving Iran.

Iran said the attack had caused the Iranian ship "to explode, killing one sailor and injuring several others," and warned that it would respond. "The Ukrainian regime must certainly be held accountable for it," Baqaei said.

“The U.S. welcomes the decision by interim President Delcy Rodriguez and Venezuela to withdraw from the ICC,” it said in a post on US social media company X.

It also praised the new Venezuelan government’s cooperation with Washington’s efforts to “dismantle” the Hague-based court.

The agency accused the ICC of failing to produce results from its investigation into former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro while directing resources toward countries with “competent, independent judicial systems” that had not accepted the court’s jurisdiction.

“This is blatant overreach, political bias and selective enforcement,” it said, describing the court as neither credible nor legitimate.

The agency said Maduro is facing justice before a US court for crimes he allegedly committed, crediting President Donald Trump and US service members.

The US Embassy in Dublin has responded after the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill was signed into law in Ireland on Thursday, July 23.

"The Israeli Settlements Bill risks real unintended consequences, particularly for nearly 1,000 U.S. companies and the hundreds of thousands of Irish jobs tied to them," the US Embassy in Ireland said on Friday.

"If the goal is to make a meaningful difference for Palestinians, the focus should be on coordinated international efforts that deliver real impact, not symbolic measures that harm Ireland’s economy and will not advance peace.

"We urge Ireland to avoid pushing similarly unhelpful initiatives at the EU-level."

Three Israeli citizens facing conscription into the Israel Defense Forces have been granted the right to reapply for protection visas in Australia, after a government tribunal found they held a genuine fear they would be forced to break international humanitarian law in Gaza.

The Administrative Review Tribunal found the punishment the young adults could face from the state of Israel – including imprisonment as conscientious objectors – would amount to persecution.

Ukraine’s leading arms company is manufacturing about 100 long-range Flamingo cruise missiles a month, a rate able to support an enduring campaign of deep strike against targets hundreds of miles inside Russia.

Fire Point is also making FP-1 and FP-2 fixed-wing drones at a rate of “hundreds per day”, according to chief executive Iryna Terekh. Manufacturing at scale is restarting after a pause caused by the delay in signing off €90bn of EU lending to Ukraine.

The startup’s development from its postwar foundation in 2022 demonstrates the rapid maturing of Ukraine’s homegrown defence industry, finally giving its military the long-range capabilities denied by the west earlier in the conflict.

“I’m not aware of any deep strike attack that was happening in the past few months that was not involving our products,” Terekh said. Missile and drone attacks using Fire Point munitions were taking place at a daily rate of “on average five to 15”.

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Fire Point now operates from 83 factories inside Ukraine, plus another in Denmark, employing 6,000 people, up from 3,500 late last year, according to Terekh. The Guardian visited one manufacturing site last December, where dozens of men were assembling the plywood, plastic and carbon fibre structures into whole drones.

“What we’re seeing now is the result of several years of effort by the Ukrainian side,” said Ben Hodges, a former general who commanded the US army in Europe. “They can not only reach deep inside Russia with precision and get past Russian air defences, their weapons also carry a payload big enough to achieve effect.”

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Terekh, who studied architecture before joining Fire Point in the summer of 2023, when it employed 18 people, said the company is an example of how the Russian invasion has urgently forced Ukraine – once at the heart of Soviet industry – to modernise and regenerate itself.

“Ukraine, in a postwar economy, will need to be an exporter of things with a high additional added value. We do not want to be like a breadbasket any more for the world,” said Terekh, referring to Ukraine’s historical strength in agriculture. For now, however, the demands of the war mean Fire Point’s weapons are not exported.

Archived

Russia is likely assisting China in training its military personnel, as well as providing Beijing with intelligence and advanced military technology, which could give China an advantage in the event of a potential conflict over Taiwan, according to a report by the Economist (archived).

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since 2024, Chinese military personnel have been undergoing training in the use of drones and urban warfare at a Russian military training ground near Volgograd. This facility is regularly used by the Russian Federation’s 8th Army, which is one of Moscow’s key forces in the war against Ukraine on the eastern front.

For China, such cooperation helps compensate for its lack of modern combat experience. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has not participated in major armed conflicts since the brief border war with Vietnam in 1979, so Beijing is seeking to gain practical knowledge of modern methods of warfare.

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China has also gained broader access to Russian military technologies that the Kremlin had previously been reluctant to share. U.S. and European officials speculate that this involves, in particular, the development of Chinese air defense and missile defense systems, as well as assistance in building low-noise nuclear submarines.

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China is particularly interested in Russia’s experience in the Black Sea, where Moscow is countering Ukrainian maritime drones.

The West is also closely monitoring the two countries’ cooperation in the field of underwater technology. The head of U.S. Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Michael Brooks, stated that by 2035, China could have about 80 submarines, half of which will be nuclear-powered. According to him, new models may feature improvements in reactor design, sensor performance, weapons integration, and noise-reduction technologies.

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Archived

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/68621453

Here is the full report: How the CCP Outsources Surveillance (pdf)

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The effectiveness of China’s online censorship springs not from the party-state’s bureaucratic capacity but from its ability to coopt market forces. What began as the rumored “fifty-cent army” of idle posters has grown into a profit-making industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, as Chinese Communist Party [CCP]committees and government agencies outsource digital surveillance and opinion management to private firms.

These companies detect “sensitive” words, flood platforms with propaganda, and suppress troublesome posts with a technical precision the state lacks on its own—letting some discussion continue while stopping the rest, and heading off “online mass incidents” before they spill into the streets. The arrangement, the author concludes, does not bode well for dissent: Surveillance is becoming more precise and preemptive, and so long as businesses find it profitable to collaborate, society will struggle to find a counterweight to market-enhanced digital repression.

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The reach and prowess of the CCP regime are amply recognized; what is less recognized are the other forces (whether profit-making arms of the state or private firms) that the state mobilizes to penetrate society—online and offline—and shape desirable social behavior.

Judging by the size of the industry that has sprung up, the outsourcing of digital surveillance has been a success. Communism’s ideological sway may be waning, but market incentives remain effective. The party-state can no longer turn out neighborhood elders to persuade communities to follow CCP edicts, but there is money to be made in online-opinion control because the party-state values it and will pay for it.

The outsourcing of digital monitoring does not bode well for dissent in China. Online surveillance is becoming more precise and better at preemption. Outbreaks of social dissent against the CCP regime are being stopped before they can start. If one does happen, as in the white-paper protests, the regime has the precision capabilities (thanks to out-sourcing) to respond to it without needing to choke the entire internet.

So long as businesses are willing to collaborate with the state, it will be hard for society to find a counterweight against market-enhanced digital repression.

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Archived

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The recent prosecutions [of independent book sellers in Hong Kong] show that the boundary of acceptable behavior has shifted once again. The book store Have a Nice Stay had already announced its closure before the raid took place, citing “uncertain red lines.” When it becomes arguably impossible to adapt, a decade-old model of cultural resistance begins to fade away, with consequences for what remains of Hong Kong civil society.

For the authorities, there are benefits to maintaining what one could term strategic ambiguity. However, one might argue that even the national security police themselves do not know what or where the “red lines” are. Communities, civic spaces, and speech in Hong Kong will come under increasing examination as the government uses and ever-finer comb to find supposed threats. With the obvious targets out of the way, the range of what will be allowed seems set to shrink still further. Meanwhile, the police, whose budget has ballooned in the past years, need to justify their existence even as there is less and less to scrutinize.

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The censure of independent bookstores – together with the assemblage of other measures taken to advance one sense of Hong Kong society, identity, history, and culture – are part of a larger campaign to re-align Hong Kong’s “hearts and souls.” The governments of Hong Kong and China appear determined to give only one option to Hong Kongers: to remember their “Chinese heart” and fall in line in a new society under the auspices of national security, where the only way forward is the one offered by the government.

[...]

Duration - 1:19:42

[A video podcast about Cuba from the podcast team Cuba Analysis Podcasts]

In this episode of the Cuba Analysis Podcast, co-hosts Helen Yaffe and Nina Blodau speak with Professor Isaac Saney, a Black Studies and Cuba specialist, historian, professor at Dalhousie University, author of two books about Cuba, and spokesperson for the Canadian Network on Cuba, which is among many groups named in the new US State Department report ‘Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism’.

Professor Saney breaks down the 100-page report which, despite lacking evidence, depicts Cuba as a global subversive force guiding the US and international left over decades. Saney explains that the objectives of this McCarthyite document are to justify the genocidal US blockade and lay the groundwork for future military aggression, as well as to revive Cold War-era repression of the left domestically and beyond.

We discuss the suffocating US sanctions imposed in 2026, their impact on Cuba’s economy and the population’s access to essential goods, and the muted international response. Professor Saney points out that 136 countries voted against the US blockade at the UN, despite US pressure, although Canada and several EU countries shamefully abstained.

We also talk about Cuba’s historic contribution to African liberation struggles, with a focus on Cuba’s support of the struggle for Angolan independence and the defeat of the invading South African army, which contributed to the end of Apartheid – the focus of Isaac’s book, Cuba, Africa, and Apartheid's End. This historic contribution is ignored in the State Department report, which Saney describes as a white supremacist.

Saney concludes by calling for more concrete international solidarity with Cuba, arguing that defending Cuban sovereignty, self-determination and socialist development, is also a defence of international law, opposition to normalisation of genocide and resistance to imperialism.

https://archive.ph/1CERr