As the curtain drew on this year’s “two sessions,” the Chinese state media was busy accusing the country’s millions of unemployed university graduates of being “picky” and not giving up their “Kong Yiji long gown.” In mid-March, a Communist Youth League and CCTV joint social post targeting a self-deprecating “Kong Yiji” meme by young netizens who joked their academic degrees made them “unemployable", is making the country’s “restive” youth furious. A month later, with the censors having miserably failed to prevent the meme from going viral, the skittish party-state now fears millions of unemployed youth might get swamped by a subversive social movement.

Remember, two years ago the social resistance movement called “lying flat” by underpaid young Chinese frustrated with grueling work hours had left the authorities worried, who saw it as a potential threat to “China’s dream of national rejuvenation.” Several other popular buzzwords on Chinese social media in recent years include bai lan or “let it rot” and shuan Q or “speechless or have no voice,” etc. These catchphrases have emerged as an essential part of the Chinese cyber narrative and express collective sentiments against social and economic marginalization, gender discrimination, unemployment, and so on. Increasingly, critics in China are describing online buzzwords as a reflection of the state of mind of the digital masses and the state of society. This year’s internet slang – Kong Yiji – has already drawn condemnation from the authorities.

Who is Kong Yiji?

The first thing first. The Chinese cyber censor authorities have banned the Kong Yiji hashtag; and a pop music video called Sunny and Cheerful Kong Yiji has been struck down on China’s YouTube version, Bilibili. This move came following the state media, especially Qingnianbao or Youth Daily, the official publication of the Communist Youth League of China was alarmed by the increasing popularity of phrases such as Kong Yiji wenxue or "Kong Yiji Literature" and Kong Yiji changshan or "Kong Yiji long gown" on China’s vibrant social media.

Kong Yiji, a Chinese short story first serialized in a Beijing news weekly in 1919, was a part of the short story collection, titled Call to Arms by China’s most influential and famous writer Lu Xun, in 1923. The male protagonist in the short story, Kong Yiji, is a disillusioned scholar who is constantly ridiculed and often beaten up (for stealing books) at a tavern he regularly visits.

Lu Xun’s use of imagery, symbolism, and metaphor served as a symbolic interpretation of his contempt for Chinese traditional values and thought, particularly targeting Confucian values. Speaking of Kong Yiji, academics have touted the “short story as a critique of late-imperial China’s receding intellectual class and a society unbothered by the economic plight of others.”

Best of Explained

Click here for more

Why has Kong Yiji returned? Why now?

As mentioned, two months – March and April – is the time of the hiring season in China, popularly known as jīnsān yínsì, or “golden March, silver April.” Last year a record number of 10.76 million Chinese graduates “entered society” – a coded term meaning fresh college degree-holding job hunters. This year, amid an ongoing shortage of jobs, an unprecedented 11.6 million “highly qualified” young people, facing a lack of employment opportunities, are struggling to find a decent job but are ending up doing “grueling shift work in the gig economy.”

According to reports, unable to find a job suitable to his college degree, an unemployed graduate complained in a now-deleted post that he was stuck on a scholarly pedestal like Lu Xun’s fictional character Kong Yiji.

In mid-March, with the Weibo post going viral on various social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douban, Douyin, and WeChat, a new phrase “Kong Yiji literature” was born. Typically, intolerant of criticism –especially alarmed as the “historical nihilism” in the ideological arena recently manifested, the surveillance party-state which denies Chinese people to freely air their views, the CCP propaganda organs quickly started telling young graduates to not feel shy to roll-up sleeves of their “long gown.” The “long gown” was considered the only symbol of a scholar’s identity, social status, and distinct imperial privilege under the Confucian feudal order.

But as Lu Xun saw it, the “long gown” wearing Kong in the short story “Kong Yiji” was a symbol of the ills of China’s feudal society. What further infuriated the young graduates regarding the Party’s propaganda was the misconstruing of the metaphor Kong Yiji (as was used by one unemployed graduate in the social media post).

“The reason why Kong Yiji fell into his predicament wasn’t because of his learning, but because he was unwilling to change his situation through labor,” the CCTV and Youth League post had said. As it were, however, this immediately sparked a further backlash. Angry that the young people were being blamed, another post appeared (which was quickly taken down by the censors) on ByteDance-owned news platform Toutiao, suggesting that “Xi Jinping was responsible for the youth unemployment.”

Also in Express |Why has Dominic Raab resigned as British deputy prime minister?

Catchphrase “Kong Yiji” – A potential diverse social movement?

What is most worrying to the authorities is the online confrontation between the Party propaganda machine and millions of young netizens – unlike similar past controversies such as “lying flat” and “involution” – is increasingly drawing the mainstream media and the academia into the controversial “Kong Yiji” debate. While some see the use of the phrase as a metaphor more light-hearted, the authorities have proved themselves to be totally insensitive to the sentiments of the young millions.

Questioning the education system in China today, Professor Wang Dan, a long-time researcher engaged in rural education, asked in a signed op-ed last week: “What kind of education should one receive so as not to become Kong Yiji?”

What is significant is that the semi-private but state-controlled Shanghai publication, The Paper (Péngpài in Chinese) – widely read by China’s cyber-savvy urban intelligentsia – was the first mainstream media to challenge the Party’s propaganda organs. Highlighting the plight of the unemployed youth, The Paper defended the “Kong Yiji literature” meme as an expression “full of anxiety and a normal emotional reflection of the state of life.”

On the other hand, pointing out that “Kong Yiji literature” phenomenon is not limited to China only, economics professor Yao Yang at Beijing University’s National School of Development told guancha.cn: “One key factor behind the emerging ‘Kong Yiji’ trend is a massive increase in liberal art enrolment in colleges, and universities. There aren’t too many jobs for such graduates.”

Finally, despite the backlash the joint CYL-CCTV social post has generated, and despite a section of the state media continuing to accuse the young people of not letting go of “long gown,” many online commentators and op-ed pieces have not stopped to weigh in. As a young graduate posted on a social media platform: “Young people aren’t stupid, and everyone is well aware that state media has its own agenda.”

A hundred years ago, unable to respond to the social strife revolving around the “scholar’s gown,” the dying Qing dynasty rulers threw away the baby out with the bathwater, i.e. they abolished the centuries-long imperial examination system [in 1905]. With the unemployment crisis only threatening to go from bad to worse in China today, it will be interesting to see what the CCP will do.

Hemant Adlakha is a professor of Chinese at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is also the Vice-Chairperson and an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), Delhi.