In case there was any doubt that China's great capitalist experiment was over & China is returning to its Maoist roots:

Mr. Xi’s instruction to move to the countryside is equally out of touch with young people, as well as with China’s reality. Last December he told officials “to systematically guide college graduates to rural areas.” On Youth Day a few weeks ago, he responded to a letter by a group of agriculture students who are working in rural areas, commending them for “seeking self-inflicted hardships.” The letter, also published on the front page of People’s Daily, triggered discussions about whether Mr. Xi would start a Maoist-style campaign to send urban youths to the countryside.

Wang, a former advertising executive in Kunming in southwestern China, has been unemployed since December 2021 after the pandemic hit his industry hard. He talked to his parents, both farmers, about moving back to their village and starting a pig farm. He said they were vehemently against the idea. “They said they spent a lot of money on my education so I wouldn’t become a farmer,” he said.

Mr. Xi “talks about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation all the time,” said Steven, who graduated from a top U.K. university with a master’s degree in interactive design and has yet to find a job. “But isn’t the rejuvenation about not everyone engaging in physical labor?”

Out of 13 Chinese graduates from his school, the five who chose to stay in the West have found jobs at Silicon Valley or Wall Street firms. Only three out of the eight who returned to China have secured job offers. Steven moved back to China earlier this year to be closer to his mother. Now after months of fruitless job hunting, he, like almost every young worker I interviewed for this column, sees no future for himself in China.

“My best way out,” he said, “is to persuade my parents to let me run away from China.”