The term reminded me of the book from the seventies about the “Emperor of the Blue Ants.” Back then, the metaphor had been a fair description of China’s reality, but a generation later, the young and ambitious called themselves ants out of resentment. If China did not begin to integrate them into the cities, the urban underclass would reach five hundred million people by 2030 (half the entire urban population), but the government found this fact uncomfortable, so in December 2010 the agency responsible for unemployment data put out a set of rosy statistics reporting that more than 90 percent
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