The fact that so many of China’s youth are only children probably means many are spoiled and unwilling to take jobs that are “beneath” them. This is one reason there are a lot of grunt jobs vacant and available for illegals to fill in the US, and probably in Europe. China may not be attractive enough to gain additional needed workers. Our problem is to regulate the flow of immigration to meet our needs without overwhelming cities and towns with excess population.
The huge number of excess housing reminds me of my thoughts around 2000 when I would visit Miami approaching from behind and see such large numbers of new houses being built and sitting unsold. Then 2007/8 hit. I remember seeing a movie, I think “The Big Short” was the title, and it showed one of those houses with an alligator living in tne abandoned pool. My thought on those trips was, “Where are they going to find buyers for all those houses?” I wondered if they represented invested drug money. I heard that Brazilians were often buyers of vacant high rise condos in Florida.
China is also getting rid of low end assembly manufacturing and trying to go over to a headquarter economy like Tokyo, New York etc. Naturally, there are hundreds of thousands of workers unemployed with little prospect of getting another job.
For example, Shenzhen, which went for a sleepy Chinese village of 500,000 to 18 million with all the low end assembly manufacturing jobs, is now falling back towards its original population.
This is repeated all across China’s economic sectors.