Chinese Youth Unemployment Nearly 50%?

From the Japanese newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun: "Chinese professor says youth jobless rate might have hit 46.5%". From the lede:

    An unusually public claim by a Chinese professor that the country’s youth unemployment rate might have hit close to 50% in March has revived a debate about official statistics and focused attention on a weak labor market.

    The National Bureau of Statistics said that month’s jobless rate for people between the ages of 16 and 24 was 19.7%, less than half of what Peking University professor Zhang Dandan estimated.

    If 16 million non-students “lying flat” at home or relying on their parents were included, the rate could have been as high as 46.5%, Zhang wrote in an online article in Caixin, a respected financial magazine.

    Zhang is associate professor of Economics at the university’s National School of Development. Her article, originally published on Monday, has since been removed.