A restless Gen Z is reshaping the Chinese Dream

"I've had one, two, three, four... five jobs in the last few months," says Joy Zhang, a 23-year-old graduate.

She counts them on her fingers as she walks through a line of stalls at a local food market in Chengdu, a city in south-west China's Sichuan province.

"The fact is there are lots of jobs, the problem is whether you are willing to lower your expectations," she adds, before turning to negotiate a price for snow pea shoots.

Joy's experience is not unusual in today's China, where there are more graduates than employers that need them. Out of her class of 32, only around a third have found full-time jobs since graduating in the summer.

More than one in five people between the ages of 16 and 24 are jobless in China, according to official data from August 2023. The government has not released youth unemployment figures since then.

With China's boom years behind them, millions of young people are confronting a future they did not prepare for - and how they respond will shape the fate of the world's second-largest economy.

A revolution is taking place in the minds of the country's Generation Z, according to anthropologist Xiang Biao, an Oxford University professor who spends a lot of time speaking to young people in China.

"The entire life of young people has been shaped by the idea that if you study hard then at the end of your hard work there will be a job and a highly-paid, decent life waiting for you. And now they find out that this promise is no longer working."

Opportunities have shrunk in a slowing, highly-indebted economy that was hit hard by sudden and total Covid lockdowns. And under Beijing's unyielding grip, China is now an uncertain place to do business for both hungry entrepreneurs and foreign investors.

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