Young, educated and jobless in China

[Hannah Bell]

Six months after graduating from university, Guan Jian was unemployed and living in an 8-by-8-foot rented room on the fringes of this sprawling capital.

His quarters were so hastily built that the landlord didn't bother to include a bathroom. When duty calls, Guan must trudge to the neighborhood toilet. Yet at $65 a month, it's all he can afford. Money is so tight at times that he has learned to suppress his hunger with a single steamed bun a day.

This wasn't how things were supposed to be for Guan, a 24-year-old broadcast journalism graduate who sports an easy smile and has a love affair with foreign film. A native of China's northeastern Rust Belt and the first in his family to earn a college degree, Guan thought opportunities would come more easily.

Instead, he is one of 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.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/18/business/la-fi-china-grads19-2010feb19

An explosive report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in September said earnings of graduates were now at par and even lower than those of migrant laborers. The news came as a blow to many high-aspiring parents and youngsters in a country that has for centuries prided itself on cultivating elite Confucian intelligentsia...

Some 6.1 million graduates entered the job market this summer, 540,000 more than last year. In 2008 the employment rate for graduates was less than 70%. This year nearly two million of graduates, many of them postgraduate diploma holders, are expected to be left without job placements.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KJ22Cb03.html


And this in a country where reportedly only 35% of youth *enter* high school (education is mandatory & free through 9th grade only), & an even smaller percent enter college.

http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=338&catid=13&subcatid=82

[AdHocSolver]

1. Unregulated capitalism will destroy Chinese society like it is subverting other societies.

Capitalists are recreating feudalism in modern times. They are openly using complicated financial schemes to take control of all useful assets, with the aim of making a subservient class of serfs out of the former middle class.

Modern technology is propelling this effort forward at a record pace. The computer is their main weapon in this onslaught because of the speed with which they can defeat their opponents. Another factor is that people put too much trust in the "accuracy" and "honesty" of computers. It is difficult to dispute what the computer does when the very groups that are exploiting the computer control all the data handled by computer, and often there is no "paper trail" available.

Capitalists deny "global climate change" because the looming storms, floods, and droughts suit the capitalist need to eliminate the "overpopulation". To the capitalist, like the feudal lord of old, if one doesn't add to the feudal master's wealth and power, one is wasting valuable resources.

As usual, the proletariat doesn't get it. When manufacturing required skilled or semi-skilled labor to make goods, it was in the capitalist's interest to provide health insurance, as it was cheaper to heal an experienced, productive worker, rather than hire and train a new employee.

Today, with automation, the necessary skills can be "taught" to a computer, and a middle school graduate can be trained to operate the machine. Even better, from the capitalist's standpoint, a young person in Bangladesh or China can be as easily trained to operate the machine as anyone else. Why waste medical resources on unneeded labor.

With the financial functions of business becoming more automated, large numbers of college educated middle class workers are likewise no longer needed. Capitalists don't want the government to provide stimulus funds because that would raise the people's expectations about the economy recovering. People having jobs and earning money is a drain on the acquisition of wealth by the upper class. It is undesirable.

The only solution for the people is to stop playing their game...while you can still influence the outcome. Once they have all your money, you become irrelevant.

The major way that you can have any effect is to hit them in their wallets. Stop buying overpriced imported junk, stop buying gas-guzzlers, stop providing profit to whatever they invest in. Stop buying the newest (overpriced) gadgets every time their is an expensive "upgrade".

Do demand locally made and American made products from retailers. Within the "global economy", people as "workers" have little clout. As consumers, if you still have some money, you still have some influence. If you aren't useful to the Powers That Be, they will not bother to heed anything you do or say.

Most people are like the lobster in the water that is being slowly brought to a boil. They think that they are safe only because they are not paying attention to what is happening in their environment.

[TBF]

3. "Regulating" doesn't work so well either. nt

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. kick