The Mid-Autumn Festival is a Chinese festival where people celebrate by eating mooncakes. The holiday is usually China’s peak season for gift-giving. This year, the market for mooncakes in mainland China is particularly sluggish. According to the China Bakery and Confectionery Industry Association, mooncake sales are projected to decline by 2 billion yuan (US$ 280 million) compared to last year. Some market analysts have labeled this as the “coldest Mid-Autumn Festival in history.”

An article on Yahoo Finance listed three reasons for this to happen:

1. With the mainland economy struggling, corporate gift-giving this year has completely dried out, especially in the four major “gift-giving industries”: real estate, construction, building materials, and finance. These sectors have realized that “relying on mooncake gifts isn’t bringing in business.”
2. Family gift-giving has also decreased significantly due to reduced consumer spending power. In an environment of consumption downgrade, consumers are opting for lower-priced, homemade mooncakes with simpler packaging.
3. Also young people are increasingly seeking healthier diets, and traditional mooncakes, which are high in oil and sugar, are viewed as unhealthy.

Source: Yahoo Finance, September 16, 2024
https://hk.finance.yahoo.com/news/史上最冷中秋？月餅滯銷-市場盤點三大終極原因-042821633.html

In a significant shift reflecting China’s changing economic landscape, several Chinese universities are discontinuing their civil engineering and architecture programs. This move comes as the country grapples with an ongoing real estate crisis, dramatically altering the job prospects for graduates in these fields.

Once considered a golden ticket to stable employment, civil engineering degrees are now being labeled as “pit” programs by netizens. The real estate sector, long a major employer for these graduates, has seen its boom days come to an end, leaving many students scrambling to transfer out of these programs.

Prominent institutions such as Shandong University, China University of Petroleum, and Beihang University have announced plans to close multiple undergraduate and graduate programs related to civil engineering and architecture. Statistics from universities like Hunan University and Changsha University of Science and Technology reveal a mass exodus of students from these departments, with dozens to over a hundred students transferring out annually.

In response to dwindling enrollment, some universities are adapting their strategies. Southeast University, ranked second nationally in architecture, has opened its doors to liberal arts students for its architecture program. Meanwhile, many institutions have quietly removed civil engineering majors from their admission catalogs.

Interestingly, as traditional programs decline, a new trend is emerging. “Smart construction” and related fields are gaining traction, with 153 universities now offering such majors – more than double the number from three years ago. However, some students report that these new programs are essentially rebranded civil engineering courses with added computer classes, hoping for a genuine shift towards smart technologies in the future.

As China’s education sector adjusts to economic realities, the transformation of these once-popular majors serves as a stark indicator of the broader changes sweeping through the country’s job market and economy.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), September 15, 2024
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202409150056.aspx

In a landmark move, China’s State Council presented its inaugural report on government debt management to the National People’s Congress (NPC) on January 10, 2024. Finance Minister Lan Fo’an, speaking on behalf of the State Council, disclosed that China’s statutory government debt surpassed 70 trillion yuan ($9.8 trillion) by the end of 2023.

The report, a significant step towards fiscal transparency, revealed a total government statutory debt balance of 70.77 trillion yuan ($9.91 trillion). This figure comprises 30.03 trillion yuan ($4.20 trillion) in national debt and a staggering 40.74 trillion yuan ($5.70 trillion) in local government debt, indicating that local obligations outweigh central government debt.

Based on China’s 2023 GDP of 126.06 trillion yuan ($17.65 trillion), the government debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 56.1%. The national debt is primarily domestic, with 29.70 trillion yuan ($4.16 trillion) in internal debt and 334.6 billion yuan ($46.84 billion) in foreign debt. Local government debt is split between 15.87 trillion yuan ($2.22 trillion) in general debt and 24.87 trillion yuan ($3.48 trillion) in special purpose debt.

The State Council outlined five key areas for strengthening debt management, including scientific determination of debt size and structure, reforms in national debt management, improved local government bond oversight, enhanced supervision processes, and increased cooperation with NPC oversight mechanisms.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), September 15, 2024
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202409150091.aspx