China’s young, restless and criminally inclined

China’s young migrant workers, those born after 1980, were responsible for one third of all the country’s crimes last year, a new report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says.

The report, released by the government-affiliated think tank on Friday, said that although this particular age group accounts for just 7 percent of China’s overall population, it’s to blame for an outsized portion of the country’s crime. According to the official China Daily newspaper, the report says lack of education of young migrants is not behind their criminal ways. Rather, the 100 million migrants of that generation who work far from home face societal hurdles created by economics and exclusion. That exclusion is often blamed on China’s household registration system.

"It is discrimination and exclusion, job and education difficulties, unfair political and economic treatment, inadequate social security and relief, and cultural shocks that cause the high crime rates among the group,” the newspaper quoted the report as saying.