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Reuters
Reuters
Business
By David Kirton

Younger Chinese are spurning factory jobs that power the economy

FILE PHOTO: People rest on stone barricades on a street, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Shanghai, China, September 9, 2022. REUTERS/Aly Song

Growing up in a Chinese village, Julian Zhu only saw his father a few times a year when he returned for holidays from his exhausting job in a textile mill in southern Guangdong province.

For his father's generation, factory work was a lifeline out of rural poverty. For Zhu, and millions of other younger Chinese, the low pay, long hours of drudgery and the risk of injuries are no longer sacrifices worth making.

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