"Talent training is worth how much it costs," turned off about 107 graduates: why Zhou Xiaoping and Starbucks are really stressed until the supply chain complaints

It may not matter what Chinese entrepreneurs say in front of the awards table, the congress and the official media footage.The important thing is that these words don’t count when employees really become numbers on the cost table.

Recently, the old speech of Zhou Xiaoping, chairman and general manager of Zhongxiang Zhongxiang Provincial People's Congress, was spread again on the Internet. In the footage she talked about the concept of talent, saying: "I think talent training, how much money is worth spending."In another video, she spoke about respecting employees, treating employees well, calling on business managers to really be good to employees.

If nothing happens then this is just a standard speech at a Chinese entrepreneurial conference.

However, a group of university graduates just entered Starbucks in July 2026, just over a month later, faced a completely different reality: 440 of the 2026 graduates signed a tripartite agreement, 372 eventually established a labor relationship with the company, the company then selected 140 people for so-called "consultation", and ultimately 107 people terminated labor contracts, including 75 undergraduate students, 32 graduate students; 39 for R & D and technology jobs, 60 for manufacturing jobs, and 8 for functional jobs.

The most ironic place is here: on the stage, it’s “worth spending as much as talent training”; on the bottom, it’s re-calculating which young people should stay a month after getting in office.

Is this really a compelled choice in business difficulties, or is it a kind of "talent", "social responsibility", "employee care" as a public relations language, and can really be recovered at any time when there is a conflict of interest?

"Talent is done by people": Jiangsu People just shaped the image of talent for her, a few weeks later, it was hit by 107 termination agreements.

On August 5, 2026, the official website of Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress published an article specializing in the fact that delegates at various levels of Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress promoted the so-called "new quality productivity."Zhou Xiaoping appeared in the article as the president of Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress and the chairman of Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress.

She said there that enterprises must rely on technology, talent and digitalization to take the high-quality development path, and declared that they should "layeredly cultivate talents at all levels, boldly employ young people", and finally gave a very political propaganda colour summary:

“New quality productivity ultimately depends on people.”

The problem is that just before such an official report was published, Star Wars had begun to recalculate the remains of these “young talents.”

Star宇 himself admitted on September 7 that the management of the company proposed a “job optimization integration plan” in July based on orders and employment needs, and “mistakenly made a decision to shift some newly appointed classmates,” and then demanded that the human resources department implement as soon as possible.

This means that the dismissal of the 107 people who subsequently swept the public opinion is not a crude accident at the time of a grassroots HR operation, but a decision made by the management of the company. Therefore, simply pushing the responsibility to the "inappropriate way of human resources communication" can not explain the fundamentals of things.

What really needs to be answered is: Since the order and business situation in July has changed, why did the campus recruitment be carried out on a large scale before?Why are the costs caused by the company's business forecasting errors to be borne by college students who have just graduated and missed other employment opportunities?Is the company's so-called "talent strategy" a long-term commitment, or a consumption logic that can be quickly discarded when orders grow and profit bears?

2, leave the job, or go to the flow of water line "drawing screws": the first class of young people's workplace

The recording of employee appointments received by multiple media shows that the company offers some recent graduates with a career development consultation that is not in the usual sense.

• signed withdrawal agreement for "personal reasons";
• if not signed, it may be adjusted to a production operation position.

Recordings of interviews received by the media also showed that when graduates asked why the recruitment demand was closed and the recruitment was concentrated before, the company staff responded that things "comed suddenly".

On August 25, the public confirmation of the core figures of the people's office of the city: Star宇 recruited a total of 440 university graduates in 2026, with 107 of whom terminated labor contracts.But the official quality of the whole event is quite restrained, only saying that the enterprise "the method of consultation is simple and hard, lack of adequate and effective communication, causing adverse effects."

This expression itself is worth asking. Because for a newly graduated university student, this is not a “bad communication experience.” Many students give up other offers for the job, complete graduation, relocation, rental or even cross-provincial employment. Enterprises suddenly change employment arrangements during the life’s most vulnerable job window, transferring the costs caused by the company’s own recruitment decisions errors.

Third, it is not the internal complaints of the enterprise that really upgrade things, but the young people have learned to "claim"

Some of the dismissed graduates did not just limit the issue to Starbucks, nor did they just wait for the local government to give a final answer, but instead began to study the business fate of the listed company.

They found that Starbucks is not a small company that only faces local markets in the U.S., but a large car lighting supplier embedded in the global automotive supply chain.

On September 1, a spokesman for the Volkswagen Group (China) confirmed that "for the relevant complaints about the supplier, the Volkswagen Group attaches great importance and initiated a special investigation at the first time, the investigation is currently underway."

The meaning of this phrase for Starbucks may be far more realistic than the hundreds of thousands of critics on the web. Because Starbucks does not survive by public praise, but by the entire car business order. Public data show that the company's customers include Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and a large number of Chinese independent brands. In 2025, its top five customers' sales accounted for about 64.7% of total revenue. In other words, the compliance assessment of large customers is not the outer public opinion, but directly touches the business model of the enterprise.

Why is a complaint to a foreign customer more nervous than an internal complaint?

This is the problem that the entire Star Wars event is most worthy of Chinese society to seriously face. After the event, accusations such as "accusations" and "non-commercial" appeared on the network, describing students' complaints to overseas customers as a behavior that should not occur.

But the question should be asked in turn: when a Chinese company actively enters the international supply chain, actively obtains orders from foreign automotive brands, and actively finances the Hong Kong capital market, it can enjoy the funds, markets and customers brought by the global business system; why when workers use the same set of global supply chain compliance system complaints, it suddenly becomes a "claim"?

Internationalization can’t only work when it comes to making money. Supply chain compliance is of course also part of internationalization. If a company proves its world-class production capabilities to Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW, it should also accept the customer’s review of working conditions, human rights, business ethics and supplier governance.

To denote supply chain compliance complaints as “complaints” is essentially a very familiar logic: allowing enterprises to globalize to make money, but demanding workers’ rights can only be settled locally and locally.Once workers cross this border, the question is no longer described as “has the company hurt employees?” but is replaced by “why you tell foreigners.”

Fifth, a more embarrassing question: Why was the public first to respond publicly?

To date, the most clear and authoritative public action has come from Volkswagen Group (China). Other media reports have that dismissed students have also submitted materials to channels such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Hong Kong exchanges; regarding Mercedes, there have been media reports complaints materials have been submitted for further review.

The real concern here is not "foreign enterprises are more noble than Chinese enterprises".Commercial companies are not charitable organizations.Overseas car companies attach importance to supply chain labor compliance, and themselves are also bound by legal risks, ESG standards, brand reputation and the multinational supply chain governance system.

The real question is: why when these constraints start to work, we first see a complaint of an ordinary graduate, from a complaint in the HR office, upgrading to a supply chain issue that a listed company must carefully deal with? and Star's large number of domestic car customers face the public response to the event, and the contradiction formed by the public side, has also caused online discussion.

Six, from the "HR pot" to the management admitted: Star宇's own notification has overturned the original pot storytelling

After the appearance of the People's Social Bureau notification on August 25, the outside world first saw the "Human Resources Director suspended."So, a standard company crisis handling scenario almost formed: management decision-making may not be a problem, but HR execution is too rough.

However, on September 7th, Star宇’s own revision notification made the fact clearer: it was the management of the company that made the decision to change the job according to the business forecast.

• General Manager Zhou Xiaoping: discharge of salary for 1 year;
• Deputy General Manager Li Drum: adjustment of the division of labor and discharge of salary for 6 months;
• Human Resources Director Yu Zhi Ming: dismissal;
• Ministry of Human Resources Minister Li Me: dismissal.

In other words, Starbucks eventually acknowledged that the 107 people who had been dismissed were not made by HR.

Then a new question arose: The wrong decision made by a management, which ultimately cost the management, was internal deductions and job adjustments; while 107 newly graduated college students could bear the first job interruption, loss of job window, reset of life plan.

"How much money is worth spending on talent training," is the corporate philosophy, or the correct answer in the conference draft?

This also made Zhou Xiaoping’s previous speech show a very strong sense of absurdity. In the video broadcast on the Internet, she sat on the stage, faced with the camera and the audience, hand-held writing and talked about talent training: “How much money is worth spending on talent training.”

If the enterprise does not have 107 termination events afterwards, this is a standard entrepreneurial language that has no news value.

The real question then turns out to be: Was she really stating the principles of corporate governance she truly believed in, or was she just reading a correct answer politically and commercially on an occasion where we should talk about “talents”?

Corporate values are never written on the wall, it should be reflected in how to deal with people when the company is the most difficult. In the case of saying "the employee is the family" there is no cost. Only when orders fall, profit pressures, costs need to be cut, the company chooses who to sacrifice first, can truly expose what employees in the eyes of managers.

(8) The representative status of the People's Congress makes this issue no longer just an internal affair of private enterprises.

In the official narrative of the current system in China, delegates are given political responsibilities such as connecting with the masses, reflecting the opinions of the masses, participating in public affairs and overseeing state organs.

Therefore, when a company controlled and managed by a congressman is involved in a massive wave of graduate disengagement, the public of course has the right to raise questions at a higher level than ordinary corporate leaders.How does she understand the rights and interests of workers?When she publicly advocates “dare to employ young people,” does she also think that companies should take responsibility for their hiring decisions?Who does this congressman first represent when the interests of the company conflict with the employment interests of more than a hundred young people?

This is not an attack on private life, it is a normal accountability to public identity.

Focus on China: What really should be explained is why workers have to go so far.

It exposes a more eye-catching question: When ordinary workers feel that internal complaints are insufficient to solve the problem, and local regulatory notifications are insufficient to create pressure, why are they eventually translating evidence into a foreign language and sending it to the compliance department of a foreign car company?

Then things began to change.The public launched an investigation, other supply chain channels began to accept, the reputation, customer relations and capital market risks of listed companies began to become problems, and the management of the company re-apologized, re-interpreted, and re-punished.

So the so-called "Call of the Oceans", in fact, became a mirror. The mirror does not look at these college students "not patriotic". On the contrary, it sheds light on a embarrassing reality: A Chinese worker in order to make a Chinese listed company seriously hear their voice, sometimes does need to first foreign customers of the enterprise to hear.

That’s why the Starlight incident shouldn’t end with a few apologies.