(Minghui.org) The following article was written by a Falun Gong practitioner in China. He believes the current financial difficulties plaguing ordinary citizens in China are caused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), specifically its manipulation of political, financial, and even legal systems to benefit itself while harming its own people.
The author considers today’s moral corruption an underlying issue of the crisis in China. Following a series of political campaigns that targeted traditional Chinese values, the CCP launched the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. This pushed people further away from their conscience and the principles of the practice, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Over time, this led to social and financial problems, poverty, and other disasters. This causal relationship is embedded in China’s traditional culture, and it is in line with Western culture as well. One example is the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The author advises the Chinese people to cherish virtue, sever their ties with the CCP, and stop participating in the persecution of Falun Gong, either directly or indirectly.
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Based on what I have seen and heard, many ordinary people in China had a hard time financially in 2025. So, what will happen in 2026?
I want to bring up this topic, because the CCP does not care about ordinary Chinese citizens. In fact, ordinary Chinese often refer to themselves as jiucai (leeks), who are exploited by the CCP just like leeks that are harvested again and again. No matter how hard ordinary people work or try, their fate still lies in the hands of the CCP.
Just months ago, for example, the CCP’s top leader claimed that a person could live for up to 150 years, a statement that’s likely related to the CCP’s harvesting of organs from living prisoners of conscience. Netizens call themselves ren kuang (man mine, i.e. mining men instead of coal or gold) in this situation, because the resource is not renewable. The “upgrade” of ordinary people’s fate from leeks toman mine has depicted a gloomier picture—even if a person dies, his organs can still be harvested to profit the CCP.
In this context, one cannot expect the Party to change its ways and start to benefit people. That is, regardless of the financial crisis in China, the CCP elite will continue to enjoy their privileged status as usual.
High Unemployment Rate and Economic Recession
On a personal level, a society’s financial situation is reflected in the unemployment rate. “In 2023 the situation was so dire that China’s youth unemployment rate was estimated to be as high as 46.5%, according to Peking University professor of economics Zhang Dandan” and reported by Yahoo in an August 2025 article “China’s youth unemployment is so bad that Gen Z job-seekers are paying $7 a day to pretend to work in an office.” In this situation, a large number of young people were forced to take themselves out of the labor force by “lying flat”—doing the bare minimum to get by instead of hoping for a job.
The job situation seems to have worsened in 2025, and especially hard hit were recent graduates. As expected, the impact is mainly limited to ordinary families; the wealthy and powerful have no problem finding employment.
Still, the wealthy in China are also experiencing their own challenges. “China is intensifying efforts to collect taxes on citizens’ overseas income, expanding its scrutiny to less wealthy individuals after targeting the ultra-rich last year,” reported Bloomberg in a June 2025 article “China's Global Income Tax Crackdown Expands Beyond Ultra Rich.”
Both individuals and businesses are impacted. “Based on China’s tax laws, companies with annual sales of more than five million yuan need to pay up to 13% in VAT,” reported Bloomberg in November 2025. Many businesses are making profit by taking advantage of the cheap labor in China and selling low-margin goods at high volume. The new value added tax (VAT), 13% of revenue, will likely push many e-commerce businesses to bankruptcy, according to experts.
Unsustainable Economy
The financial, mental, and social impact of these issues cannot be underestimated. “This uncertainty is encouraging many of China’s youth to embrace frugality, and social media has been flooded with tips on how people can survive on very little money,” reported the BBC in a November 2025 article “Two meals for $1: Why China's youth are not spending.”
For example, videos of a 24-year-old with the online name Zhang Small Grain of Rice features how she uses a bar of ordinary soap for all her personal hygiene instead of expensive skin cleansing products.
Refusal to spend could make the economic recession even worse or last longer. So, what happened, and why is China’s economy not sustainable?
For a long time, China’s economic growth has relied on investments and exports. “In the period 1998–2015… investment—capital deepening—played a dominant role, contributing to 68.3 percent of GDP growth,” according to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024.
The investment fueled China’s manufacturing sector and at times led to overcapacity. “Overinvestment initially showed up in a booming real estate sector, but more recently has taken hold in the industrial sector. Ultimately, it has produced overcapacity and the current phenomenon of involution—disorderly price competition that damages industry health—with producer price deflation and increasing losses among domestic firms,” according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report in December 2025.
As a result, China’s cumulative trade surplus surpassed $1 trillion for the first 11 months of 2025—a historic milestone. However, this achievement also raises concerns. According to a January 2026 article in The Diplomat “How Real Is China’s $1 Trillion-Plus Trade Surplus?” the figure is roughly equivalent to the combined trade surpluses of the world’s second through tenth-largest surplus economies.
Such an unbalanced economy has harmed countries globally. Developing countries are the biggest victims. Globalization was supposed to help Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia complete industrialization, but the Chinese model has turned them into dumping grounds for cheap goods and suppliers of raw materials.
“China is seeking to portray itself as the champion of the world’s so-called ‘Global South’ of non-Western rising economies. But in its quest for influence, it’s running up against an obstacle—a rising backlash to its trade practices,” according to a Business Insider article in December 2024 titled “China’s cheap goods are threatening to undermine its influence in the developing world.”
“From Indonesia to Brazil, cheap Chinese goods—including electric vehicles, textiles, and steel—are flooding markets and, according to critics, overwhelming local industries still seeking to recover from the economic downturn linked to COVID-19,” the article continued.
All these cases highlight the detrimental effects of a faulty Chinese economy and explain why it is unsustainable. As more and more countries recognize this issue and reduce their imports from China, the CCP will have to rely on domestic demand and consumer spending. But reduced income and resulting frugality make this a dead-end option.
The Root Cause
To some degree, the trade imbalance described above is similar to cancer, a disease characterized by the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells.
“When it becomes bloodletting competition, compression, reducing tax revenue, and wage growth, all this deflationary pressure now is being exported. I really consider this an economic cancer,” explained Singaporean finance educator Loo Cheng Chuan in the November 2025 Independent Singapore News article “China exports economic woes to Singapore and beyond?”
The consequence is disastrous not only globally but also domestically. The uncontrolled overcapacity has made China the biggest debt collector in the developing world, according to a May 2025 NPR report. Inside China, the CCP and its local governing bodies have failed to repay debts and have thus become the biggest debt defaulters since 2025.
These defaults have negatively affected all industries. Except for the CCP’s key government agencies, many lower-level agencies are not able to pay their employees’ salaries. In the meantime, the CCP has printed more money, which was again pocketed by elites.
China’s economic crisis is rooted in its political priorities—global expansion and influence as well as domestic exploitation—similar to the characteristics of cancer described above. After taking advantage of restricted human rights, low welfare benefits, and low consumption to create a price advantage, the CCP then uses state subsidies, financial distortion, and policy protection to push its products to the global market. By charging extremely low prices, China is devouring the manufacturing industries in other countries.
Such a disruptive practice is consistent with the playbook the CCP has used since it took power in 1949. After seizing land and capital from landlords and business owners in the 1950s, it led the notorious Great Leap Forward in 1958, which caused the Great Famine between 1959 and 1962. Following the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the CCP carried out the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and launched the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999.
From the economy to culture, from the political system to ideology, the CCP has always prioritized control at the expense of harming its citizens. Over the past 26 years, it has defamed Falun Gong with hate propaganda and persuaded people not to listen to their conscience. Over time, people became numb to the detention and torture of innocent Falun Gong practitioners and now focus only on their own short-term gains. The persecution corrodes the moral fabric of society, and, eventually, everyone will become victims.
No Hope in Sight
In the past, parents told their children to study hard to find a job and work hard to enjoy a better life. Neither of these holds true in China today. Given the vicious cycle of debt described above, plus the mandatory social security contributions, a large number of startups and medium-sized businesses closed down. After the amended Company Law became effective in July 2024, company shareholders who had previously pledged capital but failed to contribute also became defaulters.
The ever-changing policies of the CCP have made it possible for officials to exploit ordinary people for profit. With falling real estate prices and unfinished construction projects, a person’s hard-earned money goes down the drain. The sharp drop in house prices means down payments and renovation costs are wasted since the value of property often falls below the mortgage principal. To make things worse, the owners still have to continue paying the mortgage.
China has a strict hukou (household registration) system. Many people from rural areas left their spouses and children behind and worked very hard to establish themselves in the city. The homes they bought—once a source of pride for them and their families—have now become financial black holes. Their regret over taking out these mortgages and car loans is beyond words.
Continuing to live in the city is hopeless, and not working is not an option. To make things worse, the retirement age was also pushed back. With all these factors combined, some people live in misery, and some even choose suicide.
While ignoring these domestic crises and the suffering of its people, the CCP continues to squander money by pushing its communist ideology globally.
Silver Lining
The chaos in today’s China prompts reflection on what has gone wrong, as understanding the root cause is essential to finding solutions.
Does arresting more corrupt officials fix the problem? If the root cause comes from moral decline driven by the CCP itself, these arrests are unlikely to change things fundamentally. For example, after every political campaign in the past, the CCP labeled a portion of people “troublemakers” and targeted them, only for another campaign—and disaster—to soon follow.
This is because the root of the problem is the CCP. The regime may occasionally change tactics to assuage public anger and gain foreign support (such as by maintaining a low profile as it did in previous decades), but its essence—controlling and suppressing people at all costs for its own benefit—remains unchanged.
By promoting class struggle, hatred, and lies, the regime contradicts China’s traditional values, which are based on kindness, respect, and being considerate of others. This is not surprising since communism is foreign to China; it was exported from the Soviet Union and forced on the Chinese people.
The2004book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party does a good job of explaining the roots of the CCP. Over 450 million Chinese people have figured out just how toxic the CCP is and renounced their memberships in the Party, including its youth organizations, the Youth League and the Young Pioneers. Separating oneself from the Party is important, because when people joined these associations, they were required to raise their fists and swear to devote their lives to the CCP.
In summary, the social turmoil in China should prompt people both inside and outside the country to make a moral choice before the CCP ship sinks. Those who joined the CCP at any point should withdraw from it, and people outside China should identify and counter the CCP’s ever-expanding influence in their countries and their communities. There’s an old Chinese saying: “Good is rewarded while evil is punished.” In a morally corrupt society, everyone will suffer in the end, regardless of location or social status.
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Category: News Commentary
