Businesses say they are swamped with job applications but have few positions to offer as economic growth has begun to falter. Twitter-like microblogging sites in China are full of laments from graduates with dim prospects.

The Chinese government is worried, saying that the problem could affect social stability, and it has ordered schools, government agencies and state-owned enterprises to hire more graduates at least temporarily to help relieve joblessness. “The only thing that worries them more than an unemployed low-skilled person is an unemployed educated person,” said Shang-Jin Wei, a Columbia Business School economist.

Lu Mai, the secretary general of the elite, government-backed China Development Research Foundation, acknowledged in a speech this month that less than half of this year’s graduates had found jobs so far. [Source]

The piece adds that even those who were lucky enough to find jobs over the winter are now seeing their prospective employers renege on their offers. The Atlantic’s Lotus Yuen writes that “the term ‘hardest job-hunting season in history’ has become a buzzword in China recently”:

This intimidating number is inextricably tied with discussion of another pressing issue: the employment rate of college graduates. The latest statistics released by Beijing Municipal Commission of Education show that only 33.6 percent of college graduates in Beijing have signed employment contracts, up 5 percent from April. Meanwhile, a recent report by Tecent-Mycos reveals that college graduates face gloomy employment prospects.

“I just can’t figure out why it’s so hard to get a job this year,” said Miranda Zhang, who is graduating from a university in Beijing. “I feel desperate –campus recruitment is competitive, with dozens of people competing for one position, while HR offices out in the real world usually disregard graduating students because we do not have any prior work experience.” [Source]

One CCTV reporter called the latest figures “alarming,” but Forbes contributor Gordon Chang thinks that unemployment runs deeper than the official statistics indicate:

[...]The semi-official Global Times reports that one of China’s hottest businesses at the moment is the forging of employment contracts for students.  Some universities, concerned about the withdrawal of funding due to high unemployment of their grads, will not hand out diplomas before students supply evidence of imminent employment.  The fake contracts, of course, inflate the statistics reported to—and eventually the figures issued by—central educational authorities. [Source]

Still, the problem may reach beyond slow economic growth. Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz visited a job fair in Shanghai, where HR managers look for college graduates to fill entry-level positions across a wide-range of industries, and observed that “neither group is interested in each other:”

Nicole Li is looking to hire college graduates for her property management company. “We need technicians to fix software problems, but college grads don’t have these skills,” says Li, frowning. “We need people for exhibitions who can do presentations in English, but they can’t do that, either.”

Li needs to hire people for 60 high-skilled jobs. She says among the thousands of candidates here today, she’ll be lucky if she finds one.

Tong Huiqin comes to this job fair every Friday. He graduated from the Shanghai Finance University six years ago. Since then, he’s jumped from one job to the next. “It isn’t hard to find a job,” says Tong. “It’s hard to find the right job.”

He’s worked as a supervisor for a bunch of companies, but hasn’t found the right fit. “You could have five hundred graduates and five hundred job openings here, and none of them would match up,” he says. [Source]

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college graduate joblessness, college students, economic growth, jobs, unemployment
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While many countries lament their soaring college dropout rates, China may have just the opposite problem: Too many people finishing university. Some chalk this up to the success of China’s rigorous college entrance exam and family support systems. But others say the country’s universities have become too easy and are producing a glut of graduates that are saturating an already dismal job market.

[…] In 2011, the Beijing-based Mycos Institute released a study showing that only 3 percent of China’s university students drop out [compared with 54% in the U.S., 32% in the U.K., and 11% in Japan]. The Ministry of Education immediately refuted that “high rate” saying the true proportion was just 0.75 percent.

[…] An American teacher, who spoke on the condition he and his school not be named, taught at a well-known public university in Beijing from 2010 to 2011. When he tried to fail a student who never came to class once the entire semester and then skipped the final exam, he was rebuked by a higher-up. “The director basically gave me an ‘either you do it or we will do it’ type answer,” the teacher said. “I was also told to pass on this information to other teachers with the explanation that it got more confusing if we failed a student.  In fact, if a student failed another teacher’s class, and that teacher refused to change [the grade], they had another teacher change it. I had to do this multiple times. We would have a make-up test (usually five minutes) and I would give them a grade.”

Read more on China’s booming production of college graduates, the sacrifices their parents make for increasingly uncertain returns, and the resulting hunger for security that may sap the economy’s vitality in future, via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college entrance exam, college graduate joblessness, college students, education, universities
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When officials in the city of Nanjing invited applications for a clerking post in the municipal government’s court system last month, they expected plenty of interest in the much coveted civil-service positions. But even they were suspicious when their in-boxes filled up with applications from Hollywood starlet Zhang Ziyi, pinup Fan Bingbing and table-tennis champion Liu Guoliang. An internal investigation quickly revealed that one enterprising young candidate for the position, a Mr. Wang, was so desperate to get the job that he had filed more than 100 fake applications — 50% of the total number received. Wang apparently believed that his real application would stand out all the more amid a sea of phonies and that rivals would be scared off by the number of applicants ahead of them in the queue. His cunning plan almost worked — he got noticed — but once authorities discovered what he’d been up to, they banned him from applying to the civil service for the next five years.

[...O]ver the past few years, applications to the civil service have begun to surge: 1.5 million people registered to take the 2013 entrance exams, an increase of nearly 15% year-on-year. And competition for the most-coveted government positions is intensifying. In one much discussed example in October, more than 9,000 (apparently real) people applied for a single job in the municipal Statistics Bureau in the megacity of Chongqing.

As the applications increase, the caliber of applicants is also increasing dramatically, according to Liu Xin, a professor at the Institute of Organization and Human Resources at Renmin University. “In other countries like the U.S., talented people would never choose to work in the civil service — the private sector is always their first choice,” he says. “But in China, it’s the exact opposite.” More and more talented young people are signing up for government jobs, he says.

[...] According to Renmin University’s Liu, that guarantee of job security is one of the key factors driving the renewed interest in the public sector. That guarantee has become increasingly important as the global financial crisis bites harder in China. “As a civil servant in China, unless you quit or make a big mistake, you have a job for life,” he says. “It’s the iron rice bowl. That’s especially important during an economic downturn.” Another plus is that state-sector workers routinely receive free food, free local transport and special access to cheap housing, paid holidays and other perks.

See also Chinese College Graduates Play It Safe and Lose Out, via CDT.

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Post tags: civil servants, civil service, civil service examination, college students, graduates, job market, private sector
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Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s education.

His wife, Cao Weiping, toils from dawn to sunset in orchards every day during apple season in May and June. She earns $12 a day tying little plastic bags one at a time around 3,000 young apples on trees, to protect them from insects. The rest of the year she works as a substitute store clerk, earning several dollars a day, all going toward their daughter’s education.

[…] Her parents’ sacrifices to educate their daughter explain how the country has managed to leap far ahead of the United States in producing college graduates over the last decade, with eight million Chinese now getting degrees annually from universities and community colleges.

But high education costs coincide with slower growth of the Chinese economy and surging unemployment among recent college graduates. Whether young people like Ms. Wu find jobs on graduation that allow them to earn a living, much less support their parents, could test China’s ability to maintain rapid economic growth and preserve political and social stability in the years ahead.

Reading the whole article is strongly recommended.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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To the extent that China succeeds, its educational leap forward could have profound implications in a globalized economy in which a growing share of goods and services is traded across international borders. Increasingly, college graduates all over the world compete for similar work, and the boom in higher education in China is starting to put pressure on employment opportunities for college graduates elsewhere — including in the United States.

China’s current five-year plan, through 2015, focuses on seven national development priorities, many of them new industries that are in fashion among young college graduates in the West. They are alternative energy, energy efficiency, environmental protection, biotechnology, advanced information technologies, high-end equipment manufacturing and so-called new energy vehicles, like hybrid and all-electric cars.

“If they went to China for brawn, now they are going to China for brains,” said Denis F. Simon, one of the best-known management consultants specializing in Chinese business.

By quadrupling its output of college graduates in the past decade, China now produces eight million graduates a year from universities and community colleges. That is already far ahead of the United States in number — but not as a percentage. With only about one-fourth the number of China’s citizens, the United States each year produces three million college and junior college graduates.

Aside from producing students to become part of the global workforce, Chinese state media is pushing a ‘China Dream’ of starting a business rather than vying for spots in the civil service, Xinhua reports:

Tan Longchao, Ma Nan, Chen Zhe and Tang Ming opened a shop that sells native products at the end of 2011, after graduating from Beifang University of Nationalities in northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

During the college graduation and recruitment period, some young Chinese have been inspired to pursue their dreams.

“After hearing about the Harbin story, I felt disappointed for the younger generation of our country. The four young men from Ningxia offer hope and I believe many youngsters will be inspired.” said a netizen named “Xiaobudian”.

On his blog, “Xiaodong” said, “I was hesitating about starting my own business but I know I will be halfway to success if I am brave enough to follow my dream.”

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college students, education, higher education
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The quest of most rural people for an urban hukou, as I understand it, is a search for identity. This notion includes many aspects of human dignity, such as pride, wealth, equality and respect, which rural migrants once believed they could get from China’s urbanization.

But the tragedy of China’s urbanization is that rural migrants are in the city rather than of the city. They are the most likely workers to be laid off in the competitive labor market. They cannot catch up with soaring house prices. They have to pay much more to send their kids to school in the city. Even as they desperately pursue an urban identity, they find themselves further and further away from their original goal.

So if they can get a sense of security and welfare in their rural hometowns, why bother going to the cities? The implication of college students giving up urban hukou is simple: City identity is no longer as attractive as it once was. But potentially, this process of deurbanization can help release the pressure of big cities, and raise the quality of life in both rural and urban areas. 

In August, Kam Wing Chan of the University of Washington wrote in the East Asia Forum about the complexities of China’s urbanization process and its unrealized promises of economic growth. See also recent CDT coverage of China’s rapid urbanization and the plight of the rural poor left stranded as urbanites race ahead.

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Post tags: college students, hukou, labor markets, migrant, rural development, urbanization, wealth gap, welfare
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The program would concern 10 categories of students, including those who have a poor academic performance, are addicted to the Internet, come from poor families, have a severe disease, or have radical thoughts, according to a notice on the university’s website.

The focus is mainly on students who frequently fail exams or encounter difficulties in their studies, Zha Jing, deputy director of the university’s student work department, told the Beijing Evening News.

“We try to discover the reasons for students’ poor academic performance in order to help them successfully complete their courses,” Zha said.

Zha explained that students who are critical of the university’s management belong to what is defined under the policy as students with “radical thoughts”.

“For instance, some students criticized the university just because the food price in the canteen was raised by 2 jiao (3 cents),” Zha told the Beijing Evening News.

A trial of the program began in November and is nearing its end at the university’s Yuanpei College and Health Science Center.

Peking University is, of course, the home of a number of “radical” movements in Chinese history, including the New Culture Movement, May Fourth Movement and the 1989 Protests.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, college students, Peking University, universities
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The girls from the drama academy cost the most. Actresses are pretty, after all, and pretty is the point. Steady access to their sexual favors could cost a man more than $25,000 a year, not to mention the perks and gifts they would expect.

The gentleman on a budget had better browse through students at the tourism institute, or perhaps the business school. Women there can be had for as low as $5,000 a year.

Those are the prices advertised by the young man who calls himself “Student Ding,” a senior at Shanghai University who, in the grand tradition of Chinese entrepreneurship, is earning his money by working as a pimp.

© cctvcctv for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college students, mistresses
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They are smart, industrious and marginalised, huddling together for comfort.

Hordes of China’s underemployed or underpaid university graduates have formed squalid enclaves on the fringes of the country’s big cities, earning themselves the label yi zu or ‘ant tribe’.

As their ranks swell, some observers have warned of the dangers that a mass of young and frustrated people – doing jobs they are overqualified for – might pose to social stability.

Last month, several delegates at Beijing’s annual parliamentary session urged the government to build better housing for these graduates and to do more to help them find jobs.

There are a million ‘ants’ massed around major cities, with about 100,000 in Beijing alone, estimates sociologist Lian Si, who led a two-year study that was published in a book last September.

A typical ‘ant’ hails from rural China, is a graduate of a non-brand-name university aged between 22 and 29, and earns no more than 2,000 yuan (S $414) a month working long hours as an insurance salesman, computer technician or waiter.

The LA Times has published other case studies on members of the “Ant Tribe” as well as a the socio-historical background to the crisis:

… an estimated 3 million jobless or underemployed college graduates in China, products of a mass social experiment by central planners to churn out more professionals for China’s economic development. Nicknamed the Ant Tribe, after the title of a recent book documenting their struggles, they now constitute a vast army of educated young people whose growing restlessness worries the Chinese government.

“They represent the pain and confusion of a whole generation,” wrote author Lian Si, a sociologist who spent two years living with and researching the graduates. “When all their anger and grievances reach a critical point, a special event could trigger a large-scale mass movement.”

Recognizing the potential threat, Beijing is urging state-run companies to put college graduates on their payrolls, and it’s encouraging degree holders to work in the countryside. Others are being steered into the military. State media have reported female graduates seeking marriage just end their fruitless job hunt.

The ants’ story began a little over a decade ago, in 1999, when the Chinese government launched an ambitious plan to boost university enrollment by 30% annually. At the time, the country’s factories were suffering from the Asian financial crisis. Planners believed a rise in college rolls would help China transition from a largely export-driven, low-wage manufacturing economy to a more balanced one populated by upwardly mobile white-collar workers.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Boxun reports that Beijing authorities initially issued a letter to the families of college students in the capital, requesting that their children volunteer for training over the summer vacation for participating in the October 1 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. But students resisted volunteering. In light of this, individual universities and institutions were secretly required to commit to quotas of students who would volunteer. They then compelled their students, emphasizing that entry to graduate school, Communist Party membership, and permission to study abroad were all contingent on volunteering for the summer training. Student association officers, scholarship recipients and dormitory monitors were also compelled to volunteer.

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Post tags: college students, military training, university students
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Two decades ago, China’s youth were at the forefront of a movement to bring democracy to the world’s most populous nation in demonstrations bloodily put down around Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Today, after years of breakneck economic growth, the young are more pro-government, more suspicious of the West, and genuinely proud of China’s achievements, such as the Beijing Olympics, making a repeat of June 4 unlikely.

The China of 20 years ago, where the chaos of the Cultural Revolution was still fresh in many people’s minds, is also very different from the China of today, with its shining skyscrapers, bustling malls and expanding middle class.

“This is a society in which materialism reigns. Young people go after enjoyment and so on. You can understand why they don’t care as much about society’s advancement or democracy,” said Zhang, one of the founders of the Tiananmen Mothers, which campaigns for a reassessment of the government verdict that the movement was a “counter-revolutionary” plot.

See also CDT’s section on 1989 for reports on the Tiananmen incident 20 years ago.

Also view similar stories from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times on CDT.

© jleung for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, china youth, college students, democracy, Tiananmen, unemployment
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Zhang Hao first heard about China’s 1989 student democracy movement when he was in high school. But now that he is a university student himself he is eager to declare that his views are worlds apart from the generation who gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand democracy.

[...]“We are not like them,” Mr Zhang declares of the students who grabbed the world’s attention in 1989. “I can understand that they wanted to pursue freedom and democracy, but I think they were partly misled. They knew nothing.”

[...]The only job Mr Zhang can look for with his martial arts degree is teaching, but he says selection in the education system is plagued by corruption. He might have a better chance of finding work in his home province of Anhui, but is terrified of going back to the poverty of the farming village he came from. “Sometimes I worry so much that my stomach hurts all the time. I’m so depressed,” he says.

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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in a surprise visit to a Beijing university, tried reassuring students they would be able to find jobs amid the current global economic woes, and promised more unspecified steps to help the economy.

Rising unemployment has fed Beijing’s fears of unrest as forecasts for China’s growth next year fall below 8 percent, seen as a minimum needed to create jobs and maintain social stability after years of double-digit expansion.

Students, who lead pro-democracy protests in 1989 which the government brutally put down, are a particular cause for concern.

“Students, please rest at ease, we are putting the problem of graduate employment first,” Wen was quoted as saying on Saturday to students at a Beijing university by the semi-official China News Service. “Your difficulties are my difficulties, and if you are worried then I am more worried than you,” Wen added.

Student anxieties over job prospects is a hot topic on the Internet. The blog chinaSMACK has posts on netizen responses to news of 1,300 graduate students competing to sell pork and 150,000 graduates at a Shenzhen career fair.

chinaSMACK’s summary of a Sina report:

The financial crisis makes it hard to find a job. People used to be shocked if “a good student at Beijing University sold pork.” However, more and more college graduates accept this reality now.

Recently, there was a pork retail chain store in Guangzhou looking to hire 30 employees to sell pork, and the annual salary would be 80,000 to 100,000 RMB. More than 1,300 graduate students showed up to apply. Those graduate students just graduated from different universities including Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, and South China University of Technology.

People who were in charge of the hiring said that this year was a good time to hire. 35 graduate students got their jobs as pork sellers.

chinaSMACK on a Netease post on the Shenzhen career fair:

Parked buses fill up a road near the Shenzhen Convention Center. Among them are many buses from other provinces [of China]. According to statistics, of the 150,000 graduates this time, over 70% are from universities outside of Guangdong province. Compared with last year’s job fair, this year’s attendance has reached new heights, but the number of employment positions available is still 20,000. Considering that many enterises are unable to recruit all the recent graduates they originally planned to, there are in reality less than 20,000 employment positions, causing the competition amongst graduate job-seekers to be even more intense.

Students at Shenzhen career fair (chinaSMACK)

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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At around 9pm on May 31, a Cadillac car with license plate Hunan AA8**6 was exiting out of the Tianma student dormitory and collided with a male student (reported to be 2006 graduate student at the School of Business Administration). At the time, the Cadillac driver was there to pick up a female student at the Tianma student dormitory (an eyewitness claimed that the female student and the male student knew each other). According to eyewitnesses, the male student appeared to be slightly intoxicated at the time. The driver made no apology to the male student and did not offer to send him to the hospital. Instead, the driver grabbed the male student by the head and rammed it into the ground. Then he used his feet to kick the male student, causing him to bleed in the head as well as feeling dizzy.

See more photos and translations on this incident at here.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college students, riots
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Most posts on the Chinese internet have been deleted, but one can still find photos and comments on overseas site such as wenxuecity.com.

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