Jobs Drying up in China

Chinese technology companies, like Alibaba, aren't hiring this year

With China's economy slowing, there are fears there will be lots of layoffs and university graduates not being hired.

Previously the mainland's technology companies were the main employers, but now they are hiring fewer people. The big three internet giants, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba employ tens of thousands of people, but are now freezing recruitment.

Although the Chinese government had hoped the online industry and internet entrepreneurs could create jobs, there aren't enough to keep the economy afloat. Millions of other jobs are expected to be cut in industries with excess capacity as China goes through structural reforms.

Those in the coal industry may see massive layoffs

Cao Lei, director of Hangzhou-based China E-Commerce Research Centre, said internet companies over-hired last year.

"There were many acquisitions and mergers in the industry last year, like 58.com and ganji.com, and ctrip.com and qunar.com, which led to job cuts in some departments that overlapped," he added.

It is expected that 3 million workers will be laid off in the next few years in five industries, including coal, iron, and cement, due to excess capacity.

Professor Liu Erduo of Renmin University says fewer than half of those laid off in traditional sectors would be able to get jobs in the new sectors.

He said the unemployment rate, which is now at 5.1 percent, would probably rise 1 percentage point this year.

Then Premier Wen chose to procrastinate on China's economy

"Various social problems could result. But the situation should not be as serious as in the 1990s, because today, most of the younger generation are their family's only child and they will likely rely on their parents if they're unable to find a job," Liu said.

That's really naive of Liu to say this -- for many families, their only child is their sole breadwinner -- or at least they were counting on them to be. While many of the previous generation has scrimped and saved, much of their money was invested in their child and they are now probably disappointed they aren't getting their returns back in spades.

And with the rising cost of living in China these days, coupled with the requirement to buy a flat before getting married, the economic and societal pressures must be even tougher now.

However, these economic structural reforms could have been done back in 2008 when the global financial crisis hit.

Instead of taking the opportunity to implement reforms at the time, particularly cutting the excess fat of state-owned enterprises, and letting companies face the fate of market forces, then Premier Wen Jiabao threw US$586 billion into the Chinese economy to prop it up, which only fueled corruption to great heights until President Xi Jinping took over in 2012.

One can only speculate what would have happened if structural reforms had happened eight years ago, but procrastinating on what to do with the second-largest economy in the world was not a good idea...

Fact of the Day: Hong Kong's Trashy Behaviour

Why is Hong Kong's waste output increasing each year and not decreasing?

Us Hong Kong people dump a lot of garbage.

Last year, an average of 14,859 tonnes of solid waste was thrown out every day, an increase of 3.8 percent from 2013. Most of it was a 10 percent increase in construction waste, according to the latest Environmental Protection Department statistics.

So the amount of municipal solid waste dumped in landfills increased 2.5 percent from an average of 9,547 tonnes per day in 2013 to 9,782 tonnes last year. This kind of waste is generated from domestic, commercial and industrial sectors, with one-third of it being food.

Most of the garbage, at one-third, is food waste

When broken down per person, per day, it's 1.35kg last year, 1.33kg in 2013, 1.32kg in 2012 and 1.27kg in 2011.

What are we throwing out? Can't some of it be recycled? And do we have to buy so much in the first place?

This is hardly helping to meet government targets of reducing waste by 20 percent by 2017, and 40 percent by 2022.

Recycling is doing poorly at a pathetic 37 percent last year, with the quantity of recyclable materials increased by 45,000 tonnes compared to 2014. While more metals are being recycled, the collection of paper dropped by 87,000 tonnes, and plastic by 144,000 tonnes.

The government really needs to subsidize recycling in order to make people think of this as a way to reduce their waste. We can always use the recycling for other things. It's not as if the city is poor -- we have the financial resources to support this industry to make it a more viable one and create jobs as well as clean up the environment.

Not everyone uses these recycling bins property...

In the meantime, green groups are calling on the government to implement the waste charging scheme as soon as possible, though they don't anticipate it being implemented until 2018 or 2019.

However, we can already envision people dumping their trash in public waste bins to avoid being charged, and this is being done already. Perhaps the waste management department does too good of a job taking away our garbage so there isn't an appreciation for how much trash we accumulate...