Financial Journalist Wu Xiabao banned by China for predicting Great Depression

Beijing: China has banned one of its journalists on social media. Business journalist Wu Xiaobao, who has a huge following on the Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo, has landed in trouble after one of his revelations on the country’s economy. Xiaobao said a few days ago that China is once again heading towards a major recession. He said that the situation of the country seems to be going back to the year 1927 when China was struggling with extreme poverty. Apart from them, two more users have been banned by Weibo on charges of ‘spreading negative and harmful information’.

Xiaobao told the truth
47 million people follow Xiaobao on Weibo. China’s National Audit Report states that in the year 2022, more than 980 million yuan i.e. 135.6 million US dollars was cheated in employment subsidies. Xiaobao was banned the day this report came out. The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, has said that it is not yet clear which social media site has caused Xiaobao’s account to be suspended.

lack of employment
Earlier in May, Xiaobao wrote on Jiahongshu, another social media platform, that ‘the industrial economy is sluggish and private entrepreneurs are less and less willing to invest collectively’. “Manufacturing and real estate, which traditionally employ millions of Chinese, are now weakened and unable to provide new employment opportunities,” Wu said on his official Jiahongshu channel. As of Tuesday, Wu’s latest posts were visible on his Weibo account, where he has several million followers. Xiaobao had been on this site since Apr 2022.

toughest phase in decades
At present, the youth in China are facing the most difficult times after decades. In the month of May, the youth-unemployment rate in the country reached a record 20.8 percent. While it is expected to increase further in July and August. Apart from this, 11.58 percent of the youth are ready to graduate from the university. In such a situation, this rate will increase further. According to the survey on unemployment rate in cities last month, there was no change in it and it is stuck at 5.2 per cent. But in recent months, there has been a continuous layoff in large technology companies. The South China Morning Post wrote that it seems that the pace of economic recovery in China after the epidemic has been lost after a small boom.