>>106834483
If China's situation is anything to go by, things sure look bleak.

Your entire future depends on this really difficult test you have to take during high school. If you're wealthy enough, you can bypass this by studying in Anglo countries. But even in that case it can be a grind. The Indians have an advantage you lack: fluency in English. And if you fail to make it, you'll be back to China.

Class is brutal and unforgiving, with no bells or whistles. Graduate degrees are more standard due to degree inflation. But even the young with these advanced degrees are delivering food and working at factories since the entry level job market is so rough.

The young are coping with the grind by "lying flat" and "curling inwards" in their parents' homes, becoming "adult children". The government decries this, saying it's "unpatriotic", and censoring all mentions or discussion of mouthpiece. It praises the progress and points to rising numbers on charts. You want to interrupt to correct them. You want to revolt or organize. But none of the microphones work.

You and your parents age relentlessly. With no skills or experience to sell to any other country, legal emigration is out of the question, and even the clandestine "line" through the dangerous Darien Gap between the Americas has been stamped out.

And so your only option is to cope. Hard drugs are well out of reach by now, so you instead spiral into gaming/anime addiction. No woman wants you, so even with the abolition of any family size restrictions, starting a family becomes unthinkable.

It's a depressing future, and one that seems bound for the rest of the world.