Sep 17th 2026
FEW COULD have predicted the fallout last month after Xingyu Automotive Lighting, a big car-parts maker in eastern China, decided it had hired too many people over the summer. The company gave an ultimatum to some 140 fresh graduates who had been employed there for just a few weeks: either resign with half a month’s salary or pick up a screwdriver and take a poorly paid job on the factory floor. More than 100 chose to leave. In China, where worker-protection laws are feeble, sudden lay-offs of this sort are nasty, but hardly unheard of.
Yet when the news became public, it sparked an unusual outpouring of outrage. The People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, slammed the company for “trampling on society’s trust”.
slam:
[T] ~ sb/sth (used especially in newspapers 尤用于报章) to criticize sb/sth very strongly
Volkswagen, a German carmaker supplied by Xingyu, said it was investigating the dismissals. As the pressure built, the company apologised, then fired its head of human resources and cut some of its executives’ salaries as an act of contrition.
Why the fuss? The lay-offs tapped into a deep well of public sympathy for China’s young people.
A well normally means a place where you get water:
The metaphor is:
well → source of something
They are struggling in a brutal job market that has upended people’s expectations of what it takes to succeed in China. A decade ago a university degree was still a ticket to a decent career. But a record 12.7m graduated this year, nearly 500,000 more than last year and twice the number that did so a decade ago. Demand for these young workers, meanwhile, has plummeted amid a property-market slump and flagging consumption.
demand
[U, C] ~ (for sth/sb)the desire or need of customers for goods or services which they want to buy or use （顾客的）需求，需要
to meet the demand for a product
满足对某产品的需求
There’s an increased demand for organic produce these days.
目前对有机农产品有更大的需求。
Demand is exceeding supply.
供不应求
slump
a period when a country’s economy or a business is doing very badly 萧条期；衰退
the slump of the 1930s
20 世纪 30 年代的大萧条
The toy industry is in a slump.
玩具业现在不景气
flag
[I] to become tired, weaker or less enthusiastic 疲乏；变弱；热情衰减
It had been a long day and the children were beginning to flag.
这一天真漫长，孩子们都累得打起蔫来。
Her confidence had never flagged.
她的信心从未减弱。
flagging support/enthusiasm
日益减少的支持；渐渐低落的热
And despite government attempts to fix it, the problem is becoming only more entrenched.