[Eric in the Ozarks]

I'm told China's coal industry is designed to soak up the unemployed.
A guy from a KY coal company said his employer was asked to design a surface mine in a China coal field. They came up with two draglines employing six people on two shifts.
The Chinese changed this to 35 or forty people, round the clock...

[Tenacious 1]

Don’t get me wrong. I am fairly confident that China’s economy is in trouble and set for a correction/decline. But there are a lot of variables and contributors.

If China is hiding poverty in needless jobs (like the coal industry, as you say), then they could create the same situation with anything. For instance, in some of their “peopleless cities” they built, there are armies of people employed to keep the city clean. There are no people to make the city dirty, but there are small armies of folks that sweep and pick up trash every day.