LGBTQ center shuts down, China grapples with no babies for young families and no jobs for fresh grads

This is today’s China news you need to know:

Top story: In a devastating blow to the queer community in China, the Beijing LGBT Center — one of the largest and last-standing organizations serving sexual and gender minorities in the country — has announced its shutdown.

China is launching a pilot program to encourage more women to have babies and boost the country’s slowing birth rate by creating a “child-bearing-friendly social environment.” The China Family Planning Association announced it will roll out projects in 20 Chinese cities that include “promoting marrying and having children at appropriate ages, encouraging parents to share child-rearing responsibilities, and curbing high ‘bride prices’ and other outdated customs,” state-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times reported. But while the Chinese government has doled out a slew of policies to encourage burgeoning families in recent years, those perks often rest on the precondition that a woman must be married.

Chinese banks have stepped in to help finance the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), after London-based bank Standard Chartered became the latest financial institution to refuse support to fund the $5 billion controversial energy project. State-owned China Export-Import Bank and “several other Chinese banks” will finance the $3 billion worth of debt required to build the 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) pipeline, which will transport oil from landlocked Uganda to the coast of Tanzania, Uganda’s energy minister stated. In January, two Chinese state-owned companies started building the onshore facilities for an oil field in western Uganda that will feed into EACOP, along with several other players from European and African nations.

A South Korean soccer player was detained in China for bribery. Son Jun-ho, who plays for the South Korean national team and Chinese Super League club Shandong Taishan, is suspected of accepting bribes and has been detained by state security services in Liaoning Province, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday. The news comes as Chinese authorities continue a sweeping campaign against corruption and match-fixing in the nation’s soccer industry, ensnaring a number of high-profile figures in the past six months.

China reported slower-than-expected economic growth in April, in another sign of the country’s complicated road to recovery. Industrial output, retail sales, and fixed investment all fell short of expectations, while the unemployment rate for young people rose to a record high of 20.4%.

China aims to train 10 million skilled workers per year as part of the world’s largest vocational education program, amid intensifying competition with the U.S. and impending demographic decline. An editorial in the People’s Daily today said that the program would focus on science and tech education, while also emphasizing the importance of raising fertility rates. But exports cautioned that the efforts could have unintended consequences, with one Peking University professor telling the South China Morning Post that technological change going forward render vocationally trained workers’ skills less useful in the future.

China’s most popular cross-border stock brokerage apps announced they would exit Chinese app stores as Beijing moves to reduce capital outflows from the country. Shares of the Futu Holdings and UP Fintech Holdings fell on the news of the move. The apps had allowed millions of Chinese users to trade stocks in the U.S. despite capital controls instituted by Beijing.

State media: Party paper People’s Daily’s top story today is about yesterday’s meeting between Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 and visiting Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki (English here). Xinhua’s News Agency’s website highlights a warm-up article for the China-Central Asia summit that takes place in Xi’an May 19 to 19 (English here).