KONG YIJI

1. Context 

2. Key points

• 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 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.
• Two years ago the social resistance movement called "lying flat" by underpaid young Chinese frustrated with gruelling work hours had left the authorities worried, who saw it as a potential threat to "China's dream of national rejuvenation".
• This catchphrase has emerged as an essential part of the Chinese cyber narrative and expresses 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.
• 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 chang shan or Kong Yiji long gown on China vibrant social media.

3. About Kong Yiji

• 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 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.

Image Source: Wikipedia

4. Reasons for the Return of Kong Yiji

• March and April is the time of the hiring season in China, popularly known as Jinsan yinsi 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 gruelling 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.

5. Kong Yiji literature

• In mid-March, the Weibo post went viral on various social media platforms 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 the to freely air their views, the CCP propaganda organs quickly started telling young graduates to not feel shy about 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 labour,” 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.”

6. Kong Yiji become a potentially diverse social movement

• The 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 are increasingly drawing the mainstream media and academia into the controversial Kong Yiji debate.
• One key factor behind the emerging Kong Yiji trend is a massive increase in liberal art enrolment in colleges and universities.
• There are not too many jobs for such graduates. 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 with the bathwater, i.e. they abolished the centuries-long imperial examination system (in 1905).
• The unemployment crisis only threatens to go from bad to worse in China today.