This article looks like a goldmine, but I don't have time to read it all and won't be interested in doing that once I have the time. Here's my favorite paragraph of the part I read:
Today the party’s propaganda machine is spinning stories about young people making a decent living by delivering meals, recycling garbage, setting up food stalls, and fishing and farming. It’s a form of official gaslighting, trying to deflect accountability from the government for its economy-crushing policies like cracking down on the private sector, imposing unnecessarily harsh Covid restrictions and isolating China’s trading partners.
That's what they mean, China didn't give the freedom to 10 year olds to work in the mines.
They yearn for the mines