DOSSIER

niversities in China are home to about 22 millionstudents, and come six million students gradu-ate each year. Just 12 years ago, the country had

only 830,000 graduates with a total college population ofabout 3.4 million. On average, registration has been up30 percent each semester, though the employment rateof graduates has fallen from 95 percent to 70 percent.

China has managed to surpass even the United Statesin the number of diplomas, degrees and research doctor-ates awarded each year. It’ an incredible turn of eventsconsidering the tragic legacy of the Cultural Revolution,when the colleges were closed or remained open only topeasants. No one has forgotten that forty years ago Com-munist Party Chairman Mao Zedong forced 17 million

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70 . east . europe and asia strategies number 34 . february 2011 . 71

rect contrast to the earlier period in Chinese history, it’sthe sons and daughters of peasants who are finding ittough to obtain a university education.

In the 21st century, a revolution intended to reach “alllevels of culture to eradicate the old customs and tradi-tions and create new ones” – the Cultural Revolutionmantra - would be useless. Outdated as well is the ideaof moving to the countryside to avoid “the evil plots ofrevisionists.” The old concept of re-education has all butvanished .

The needs of peasant farmers have been pushed intothe background in favor of a focus on urban areas near toChinese east coast. Though the nationally-administered“Gaokao” college admission exam is still considered thelinchpin to admission to a Chinese university, among to-day’s students it’s usually those from urban backgroundswho gain entry into the five percent of Chinese universi-ties considered as top notch.

The children of farmer and peasants are generallyforced instead to settle for a place in one of the 2,100 lessprestigious universities. This in a nation where obtain-ing a college degree, at least in recent years, has been em-braced as a trump care toward card toward building a fi-nancially secure future for the student and his family.Unfortunately, both goal and the ability to attain it, atleast among those outside the tight network of top flightschools, has become something of a myth.

he Gaokao exam is divided into two categories,humanities and science. Mathematics, Englishand Chinese are the only compulsory subjects for

each part of the exam. Questions relating to history, lit-erature and art are on the humanities side, while physics,chemistry and biology generally make up the scientific

Chinese young people to move to the countryside, hop-ing that life lived in close contact with agrarian workerswould make them into ideologically pure proletarianworkers and a model for the Chinese Communist revo-lution. Incumbent Chinese President Hu Jintao spent ayear in the 1960s carrying gravel to help build a dam onthe Yellow River.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, half the university stu-dents enrolled in key universities located in Beijing Bei-da, Tsinghua and Renmin were of rural origins. By 1999,that percentage had dropped to 19 percent. Today, thenumber of “rural” students is believed to have fallen be-low the one percent mark. It’s obvious the face of the Chi-nese university system is changing dramatically. In di-

China: Once Upon a Time, a “low cost” Empire

First-year Chinese university students prepare to register

at Tsinghua University in Beijing prior to the start of a new semester.

University graduates in China were once dubbed

“the favored children of Heaven” because they were assured

of employment as a result of their degree.

They were also offered government housing perks.

But in 2009, China had more than six million new university

graduates, and by year’s end, only 87 percent of them

had found jobs, leaving 800,000 still looking.Str

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OvercomingChina’s EducationalHandicapby Claudia Astarita

China has surpassed the United States in

annual college graduates. Most students

travel from rural homes to study in urban

universities. But with jobs often reserved for

country’s elite, many graduates can’t find

work. In an effort to give these educated

drifters a new sense of purpose, the Chinese

government is promoting incentives to try to

entice graduates back to the countryside

where they can help bolster a weak

educational system.

DOSSIER

side. Candidates may take the exam only in the districtof where they hold residency, after which they’re enti-tled to submit a list of preferred universities. The nation’smost sought-after schools are in Beijing, Tsinghua andRenmin, Beijing, and Fudan University in Shanghai.These schools are attractive largely because of their lo-cation. Graduating from one of them legitimately allowsstudents a dream of moving to a modern metropolis andmaking a better life.

Although the Chinese university system has a complexsystem of entry quotas with quotas parceling out to stu-dents from every region, once again it’s the “urban” stu-dents who appear to prevail over those from the coun-try’s outlying provinces. The major schools boast the bestfaculty, and graduates tend to fare better after their train-ing as a result of their pedigree. They’re able to gradual-ly integrate themselves into white-collar life and, aboveall, are able to find a job in a time when employment de-mand for new graduates far exceeds supply.

This doesn’t mean that urban university students don’tsuffer from the job crunch. There’s a glut of graduates ata time when the international economic crisis has re-duced the number of available jobs. Moreover, there hasbeen an increase in China’s population 20-to-25 yearsolds, which now numbers some 123 million, seventeenmillion more than just four years ago. The average salaryof workers between 2003 and 2009 increased about 80

percent, to about 1,200 Yuan (€138 euro), universitygraduate salaries haven’t moved from the 1,500 Yuan(€172 euro) and has lost a considerable amount of pur-chasing power as a result of inflation.

It’s not much better for the country’s very best students,who can hope for a maximum salary of 3,000 Yuan permonth (€345). For the rural contingent, finding a goodjob after college has become an all but unattainable goal.So-called “second class” students, even those who havemoved from villages to the cities, find themselves hand-icapped, “immersed in an atmosphere typical of the1950s,” says Liu Yang, who just moved from Datong,where she graduated, to Beijing. She herself working inconditions worthy of the Charles Dickens’s darkest nov-els. If they’re lucky, such students find restaurant jobs aswaiters or as billboards posters, earning about €120.They’re referred to as “wei ren,” or outsiders, in cities.

72 . east . europe and asia strategies number 34 . february 2011 . 73

They’re also considered untrustworthy for their lack of“guanxi,” which means connections with Chinese thatmatter, namely politicians and bureaucrats.

Many of these young people are disillusioned, angry,and often resigned to the idea of continuing to fend forthemselves in the city to avoid placing a burden on theirparents. They must contend with the guilt of having beenresponsible for the disbursal of family savings to ensuretheir education, but being unable to make good on prom-ises of upward social mobility as a result of the invest-ment.

he Communist Party is aware of the dilemma andits potential social consequences. As a result, 40years after pushing 230 Chinese towards the c-

ities in search of education, better working and livingconditions, it is now honing a propaganda campaign urg-ing students to the countryside, or stay there. In Septem-ber, while celebrating “national teachers day,” PremierWen Jiabao urged Chinese graduates to become teachers,using “all their strength to improve education in rural ar-eas of the country.”

In 2007, Beijing began offering students studying to be-come teachers at the universities of Beijing, Shanghai,Changchun, Wuhan, Xi’an and Chongqing an exemptionfrom tuition fees in exchange for a commitment to teach-ing for a minimum of 10 years, including two in a rural

setting, once again as part of the government plan to en-sure basic education to China’s more remote areas.

In 2008, the party also began to recruiting qualifiedpersonnel in rural areas also to strengthen the adminis-trative capacities of local political institutions. These ef-forts are systematically supported by a clever propagan-da campaign stressing that the “long-term developmentof the country” hinges on teachers, with students “thefoundation” for China’s future. Graduates are also regu-larly encouraged to “commit themselves to transformingtheir home towns in better places.”

From 2008 through the present day, the effort promot-ing the transfer of the unemployed urban youth to ruralareas in exchange for job security has drawn an estimat-ed 100,000 young people. Liu Hao, who has a degree inbuilding manufacturing, moved the capital Peng Song, avillage with a population of 288, not far from Chongqing.Farmers and peasants in the town continue to wonderhow their village can meet the ambitions of a collegegraduate. Xiao Lin, who earned a degree in social sci-ences at Fudan, left his hometown of Guangzhou for Si-wan, a Sichuan village.

On paper, the political-economic strategy of Beijinghas met with extreme success for two basic reasons:

First, 80 percent of China is still rooted in agriculturalwork, which means towns and villages are more thanhappy to have the presence of college graduates capable

China: Once Upon a Time, a “low cost” Empire

LEFT Chinese university graduates gather at an employment fair

in Hefei, located in the eastern Anhui province. With more than

one billion workers, China is facing a huge unemployment problem.

Only 780 million laborers are employed, according

to a “white paper” on the nation’s human resources, suggesting

that around 22 percent of the labor force is unemployed.

CENTER Students leaving the library of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

RIGHT Beijing University on graduation day.

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DOSSIER

in rural schools, most a result of outdated teaching ma-terials and poor instructors, continues to impede thecountry’s overall educational development.

“Success in China is contingent on two variables: theamount of money earned and accumulated privileges,”says Ong Kok Chung, a researcher at the Institute of Ed-ucation in Hong Kong. “Being selected to work for thegovernment, even if it’s in countryside, not only ensuresa decent salary, but assures the chosen few that they’ll bea part of the party mechanisms that will direct the coun-try in the years to come. This can lead them to hope thatthey’ll eventually occupy much more prestigious posts,perhaps even reaching the top of the party. Those whomove from the countryside to the city to study lose faceif they’re forced to return home after having made thatdecision. The government knows this and is trying to in-stall compensatory devices.”

China: Once Upon a Time, a “low cost” Empire

number 34 . february 2011 . 75

of increasing knowledge and efficient, and as resultspurring development.

But the second reason is the most compelling. Unem-ployment rates are climbing (estimated at between 20and 30 percent for graduates). A job, albeit in the coun-tryside, remains a job.

Liu Hao signed a three-year contract as an assistant sec-retary of the Communist Party and head of the village ofSong Peng. Since signed up, he’s spent most of his timeexamining government dossiers on health, planting andreforestation techniques, as well as the proper and effi-cient use of firewood. He then explains his readings tofarmers. Liu’s availability and willingness to help haswon over the usually-suspicious villagers, who now seehis efforts as am inestimably value resource.

Fudan’s Xiao Lin is also delighted with the progress ofhis students at Siwan. He works to convince high schoolstudents to work hard and earn strong test results on theGaokao tests so they can earn a spot at major universitiesin Fudan or Beijing. Xiao Lin is pleased at his success

rate, knowing that Siwan students, without his help,could never hope to aspire to enrolling in a prestigiousuniversity. Xiao is also aware that if he hadn’t been urgedto return to the countryside he might be among theswelling ranks of the graduate unemployed. For havingoffered to teach five years of geography, Chinese historyand world history in a Siwan high school, Xiao has notonly gotten a job but a grant to help cover his outstand-ing university tuition fees.

iu Xiao and Lin Hao and are part of a contingentof “rural” whose families choose to borrow be-yond their means just to pay tuition fees univer-

sity degrees they hoped would change the lives of theirchildren. They are mostly unaware that the level of edu-cation in country’s primary and secondary schools, atleast in the hinterland, is so low as to allow admissiononly to low-level colleges, which account for 95 percentChina’s colleges. At best, they can offer the luckiest grad-uate with a job as a waiter, witness the case of Liu Yang.

Moreover, until a few years ago only 20 percent ofteachers in rural schools even had a college degree, andalmost none a diploma from a prestigious university. S-ince the 1950s, school text books in use villages haven’tchanged changed.

For example, a math textbook in the tiny village in Fu-jian asks students to solve the following problem: “Dur-ing the war against the United States in support of NorthKorea, the Chinese volunteer army shot down 124 for-eign aircraft and damaged 38 others in a single day overShang Gan Ling. How many enemy planes were hit in to-tal that day?” The Korean War ended more than 60 yearsago. Or: “Capitalists care only about money and treatworkers badly. Before the Liberation (the foundation ofthe People’s Republic of China by Mao in 1949), the FuYong factory employed 150 workers, of which 136 hadlost a finger in machinery accidents. How many workersstill had all their fingers?”

The same book uses Mao’s to urge pupils to study hard-er. Numbers are illustrated with images of “virtuous”peasants, workers and soldiers. The unstated irony isthat Mao’s Cultural Revolution was directly responsiblefor the erosion of an educational system that has yet toget back on its feet. In fact, predominance of propaganda

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Chinese university students welcome first-year students

to Tsinghua University prior to start of classes.

For China, students in the countryside represent an all-encompassing issue with social ramifications. If a stu-dent graduates, he or she usually fails to integrate withthe white collar population of coastal cities and increas-ingly ends up as a waiter or a laborers. Younger students,victimized in turn by a poor educational system, can’t as-pire to get into the only universities that might guaran-tee them a prospect of social mobility, however small aprospect it might be.

Increasingly, even the most avid students quit afterhigh school, disillusioned and frustrated, convinced thatworking to obtain any kind of advanced degrees is use-less. At the same time, few want to go home, where jobopportunities are in fact more abundant. The govern-ment, recognizing the problem, intervened to make thereturn home more palatable. It wanted at all costs to wardoff disillusionment, poverty and a sense of hopelessness,which could feed the possibility of destabilizing socialunrest and a slowdown in economic development.That’s not a risk Beijing is willing to take. .