"An Ugly Thing To Watch" - China Is Facing An Employment Crisis "An Ugly Thing To Watch" - China Is Facing An Employment Crisis Authored by Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, via TheMarket.ch, The implosion of the real estate sector has stalled the Chinese growth machine. As a consequence, unemployment is rising. Western consumer goods companies with a significant presence in the country will feel the knock-on effects. The projectile that was the Chinese economy has slowed and turned back toward earth. The Zero Covid policies and the real estate crisis brought China’s economy to an unnatural equipoise, seeming to hover in a no-growth zone for a few quarters. Now, having failed to reach escape velocity, the rocket ship has turned around. The growth inversion will be an ugly thing to watch: millions of Chinese unemployed, crashing demand. Back in the late 1990s, foreign visitors to China were bowled over by the GDP growth rates: 15%, 17%, and with low inflation. Rural people moved to the coast to live in factory dorms and work 80 hours a week making widgets for the world.