How China’s jobless youth were raised to have unrealistic expectations
- A generation of young people was pumped up by an after-school education industry that preyed on the anxieties of one-child parents
- The result? A mismatch between the jobs these highly educated youth want, and the skilled blue-collar positions that need filling
With hindsight, the industry should have been banned at least a decade earlier.
Excessive attention from parents and grandparents created these spoiled “little emperors”, while the term “chicken babies” was more a reflection of parents’ desire to ensure their children overachieved. The non-stop learning activities were likened to injecting “chicken’s blood” – a reference to a pseudo folk remedy, now banned – into their children from a very young age to “pump them up”.
Regular education was no longer seen as sufficient so “chicken’s blood” took the form of extra classes to push children to get high exam scores, to better compete for places at top universities and get the best jobs.
The parents of these children were easy prey for the industry. They invested heavily in their children. If they didn’t, they feared that their children would lag behind the others.
Such a large investment and high expectations had dire consequences for today’s young people – they feel the weight of this pressure constantly and therefore tend to avoid taking risks.
This is reflected in the record number of applications to join the civil service this year – government jobs are traditionally considered to be a safe choice. Some 7.7 million people took the civil service exam this year, competing for just over 200,000 jobs, according to CNBC analysis.
The most damaging aspect, however, is the sense of superiority the intense-learning environment gave these young people. Being some of the most educated people in China in decades, they were told the sky was the limit. But the reality is that they are trapped by their education.
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And, just as Kong could not take off his shabby scholar’s gown and find manual labour, young people in China today find it difficult to disown their long-held beliefs and find work in factories. There is a clear mismatch between the jobs they want and the jobs that exist.
This is how the after-school education industry contributed to today’s situation of a large number of unemployed young people who are not prepared for the jobs that exist in China.
But it is a good start, nonetheless. The social vacuum left by the industry could be filled by short-term job opportunities, for young people to better understand life beyond exams. That is, if we want to avoid seeing history repeat itself.
To address the more pressing issue of unfilled skilled blue-collar jobs, unemployed young people could be subsidised to take technical training courses and get the help they need to make the transition, one they have been taught to resist so far.
April Zhang is the founder of MSL Master and the author of the Mandarin Express textbook series and the Chinese Reading and Writing textbook series.