JemmyChina's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras
Jeena
www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8nlpy2n1lo
China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master's degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.
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must be awful being chinese. no matter how good you are at anything there are millions just as good or better than you that you have to compete against. Not much better outside china either but it must be awful there.
How is this different than US or any other country?
there are billions of people living there. not necessarily different, just on different scale.
Don't the amount of available jobs scale too?
I feel like this problem would be the same if China was a tenth the size, same goes for US and other countries. It's a systemic issue, where the ratios of workers and jobs are wrong and unsocial.
Might be, but based on news like this it doesnt seem to be going so well there.
"based on news like this"
I think you're spot on there. Not saying that the BBC is untrustworthy, but there is always a bias in every news source. Especially when it comes to criticizing foreign policy versus local policy.
I am not disputing that it is not going well there. I'm just saying that similar issues are present in a lot of western countries. I am of course only talking about the subject of this article. If you look at how authoritarian the gouvernement is, stuff does get clearly worse in China compared to most western countries.
But at least everyone loves being in China and there is absolutely no genocide of any kind, right? …right?
By this definition of genocide, if Uyghers are being genocided then so are black Americans. So what are you doing about that plank in your eye?
https://beehaw.org/u/OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
China has created a large system of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance. Approximately one million Uyghurs have been imprisoned in detention centers, for reasons as simple as practicing their religion, having international contacts or communications, or attending a western university [...]
Some have reported experiencing torture and sexual violence [in detention camps]. Those who are detained are often unable to communicate with or receive visits from their families. Children whose parents are detained are placed in government-run adoption centers, sometimes far from their homes and families.
The Chinese government uses sophisticated technology to monitor people throughout the country. The goal is to spot any perceived infractions, such as connections with people outside of China or expressions of faith. Being caught can result in detention and/or disappearance. Uyghurs are also being watched closely by their neighbors and state agents in their communities.
Under the “Unite as One Family” program, the Chinese government has stationed an estimated one million Han Chinese citizens in Uyghur households for mandatory homestays to monitor and report on their activities and ensure that they are conforming to Han Chinese rather than Uyghur cultural practices. Uyghur families cannot refuse this in-person monitoring.
The [Chinese] state began imposing harsh penalties for violations of birth limits [in Xinjiang]. It also implemented an aggressive campaign of mass sterilization and intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) implantation programs. [...] Leaked government documents show that violations of birth limits are the most common reason Uyghur women are placed in a detention camp. Women have testified to being sterilized without their consent while in detention. Other women have testified that they were threatened with detention if they refused sterilization or IUD implantation procedures. In such a coercive environment, it is unlikely that any Uyghur woman can be said to have voluntarily consented to these procedures.
China has a long history of imposing forced labor on Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Researchers have documented a network of factories being built within and near detention camps in Xinjiang. Leaked government documents reveal that working in these factories is often a condition for release from the camps. Uyghurs have no real choice but to work in these factories, often for low or no wages. Uyghurs are also being transferred in large groups to work at factories throughout China.
Tihs is just a TINY list of atrocities, and similar things happen in Tibet as well (you find a lot of evidence from reliable source).
[Edit typo.]
jarfil
DudeImMacGyverIn the U.S. some love the "poorly educate" for political purposes until the dummies are no longer needed or they need educated talent, then it's H-1B time.
An educated public is great. A highly educated public, all the better. In my eyes there is no over educated, but rather jobs should not be below certain people to do. One on the best bakers / pastry chef's I worked with got his first degree in chemistry (which he still loves chemistry and does projects as side hobbies).
Flying SquidThese people aren't taking these jobs because they love driving and being film extras, they're taking them because they're desperate and can't find any other kind of job.
What's going to be interesting is which is going to bite China in the ass first: all the people aging out of jobs or the fact that they are aging out after being so long in the jobs that they can't find well-trained replacements.
What kind of orphan crushing machine is this comment?? Just like squid said, they’re forced to do this and not what they studied to do, what they dreamed of, etc.
Your anecdote works because the chef likes to bake and chemistry and baking go hand in hand. Delivery driving or day laboring and college degrees? Not so much.
But also, they do have a point: education isn't, or rather shouldn't be, just a means to get a better job. We don't think of someone who takes singing or playing lessons as "failed" if they don't become a professional musician. A day labourer with an art degree isn't worse than one without one
Hi, I have an MSc w/distinction and based up somebody's patio yesterday, this isn't a Chinese thing.
16.1% youth unemployment is definitely a Chinese thing regardless of your own unfortunate circumstances.
Waste of talent - unless it's really what they want to do, then that's fine.
US overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, secretaries and sales workers.
The career prospects of overeducated Americans
https://journalistsresource.org/economics/career-prospects-overeducated-americans/
37.4% of college graduates are in overeducated employment, typically working in a job requiring 12 years of education. Secretaries and sales workers account for the largest numbers of overeducated workers.
When I went to China someone told me that masters degrees are almost mandatory now because there are so few jobs for so many people. This leads a lot of them to get masters degrees because they have nothing else to do and hope it will give them a competitive edge. Enough people are doing this now that basically anyone who wants a job has to.
I don't know that this is a bad thing, firstly the people themselves have richer intellectual lives because of it. Society is similarly enriched by extension and the country has a reserve pool of highly educated people it can draw upon as needed. There are only so many academic jobs available at any time but providing for and allowing everyone access to higher education is utopian and to be commended. It shows good planning for an ever more technical world.
Yeah tell that to the people themselves who have spent so much of their life working hard to study at such prestigious institutions to not be able to find the employment they actually want.
They worked hard with the expectation of being rewarded by it with a larger payout later in life. Instead they’re stuck toiling as low wage workers, and have let their families down.
If your only reason to seek education is to make money, you 100% deserve to fail and suffer.
Was coming to say this.
It's a very... anglo conservative view to see education as a financial investment to get a job (and a working class person with an education as a waste of resources).
There's an argument to be made about the labor market in China and how its working class is remunerated in an economy designed for cheap exports, but this framing is probably not it.
So you're trying to tell me that the Chinese don't see education as a financial investment and they just do it because it's cool?
I'm not Chinese, so I can't answer that.
I can tell you that's absolutely not how or why I got my own degree. For which I paid barely anything, so hard to picture it as an investment. And it didn't seem to be much of an "investment" for my classmates, many of whom paid nothing or were paid to do it.
We did think it was cool, though. Got to meet very smart people, both as professors and as classmates, some of which I keep in touch to this day. Got to learn stuff I hadn't even considered and access technical means I couldn't have afforded. Zero regrets, even if my degree is only very tangentially related to my current job.
So... does that answer the question?
Sorry, but that's just an absolutely snobbish way of looking at education.
Of course it's an investment, you spent years of your life, took exams, wrote theses, sat in boring lectures because a person in their late teens and early 20s has nothing better to do than that? Yeah, sorry, that's bullshit and you know it.
In some countries you don't pay for education and many people absolutely love the lectures. You can study something because you love the subject. I myself enjoyed every single lecture I had and I often attended even lectures that I didn't need in my curriculum, just for the delight of learning things. I understand there are people that study just to get a degree and employability and don't really like their specialisation that much. That's ok. But studying what you're passionate about can be very fulfilling and it's ok too, nothing snobbish about it.
And that is utter bullshit.
You can't be that dense to seriously say you enjoyed every single lecture. That's a lie, and you know it.
BTW, I'm from one of those "some countries". And no, nobody, not a single person enjoyed everything. That's not how reality works.
Who are you trying to impress here?
I know nothing of the sort, and I honestly think it's far less snobbish than the alternative.
I absolutely had nothing better to do than education, that much I give you. It's a high bar, I was doing some really cool shit.
Thankfully, my government agreed with me on that one, and I'm more than happy to pay taxes for the rest of my life to make it keep being the case. And thankfully, my parents agreed as well. My dad was adamant I didn't take a job on the side despite us not being particularly well off. Probably because he's a left-leaning teacher himself and HE worked his ass off and paid all the taxes so we could all do that, not to have us drive living wages down by squatting at McDonalds, or whatever.
And sure, it was an investment in the way reading a book in my own time is an investment. It made me better at a thing and taught me things and gave me time to figure stuff out. It was certainly not an investment in my career. I haven't submitted my degree with a job application once in decades of working for a living. Did alright anyway, wouldn't have done as well without the things I lived and learned or the people I met and learned from.
Which is what education is for, in my book. If you're looking at dollar input versus lifetime dollar output... well, you do need an education, so maybe you can get that while you're making a fool of yourself getting that MBA or whatever.
Smell that? That's the smell of privilege buddy, it's not an investment for him because it doesn't need to be. Like someone who buys a watch for funsies.
Any argument that begins with "So you're trying to tell me" is being made by a person who is NOT, in fact, being told what they say they are.
This was never about academic jobs vs non-academic jobs. Yes it's true there's only so many academic positions for people with higher education, but those people with higher education should be working in high economic value positions where their level of education is actually of use. For example these people with higher education degrees in science and engineering should be working in an R&D team of an industry leading company, instead of working as a delivery driver, film crowd, or a fricking police axillary which anyone without the education background could perfectly do.
This is not what happening because there is no available positions in any industry leading company's R&D team because such companies cannot afford expanding their advanced level work force. There is a tremendous lack of social economical resources aka employment opportunities, not only this is a real sign of a struggling economy, but this is also extremely detrimental to the country and its economy as a whole, because a de fecto surplus of people with higher education degree devalues such qualifications, and make it even more difficult for people with such qualifications to find career opportunities where their qualification can be used for creating value, even if such social economical resources does come to existences, this leads to a repeating cycle that keeps getting worse.
I think that if there are indeed fewer industry research opportunities in China than in equivalent Western conditions it is likely due to the very rapid advance of these areas in China and consequent current lack of legacy infrastructure rather than due to a struggling economy. I like very much the idea of police officers with unrelated doctorates, science clubs in factories and plumbers arguing about the Fermi paradox over lunch. I think society would be far better for it and it is impossible to gauge the great value of wide and seemingly off topic experience, individually or in communities.
Technological advancements don't reduce research opportunities, rather they create more opportunities because the whole industry becomes more developed and more sophisticated, as well as creating new industries. When this doesn't happen, most of the time it is because of a weak and dysfunctional economy (as well as dysfunctional society due to poorly devised social political policies) cannot always support turning research and development to actual commercial possibilities. This used to be exactly what China is very good at in fact, because China has some of the world's most vertically integrated production capacity, like for example you can find the factories that make 70% of the different types of components in a smartphone in the same city, significantly reducing production and supplier overhead to an extent you rarely see in other countries until very recently, so it was never the lack of industrial capabilities here.
I agree it would be super cool to see plumbers discussing about Fermi paradox in their break time, but the reality is that is a very American middle class thing, whereas in China the majority of population have *extreme* social prejudice and bigotry between different social economical classes and education backgrounds, its extreme extent can only be matched by the racial and gender prejudice in the US, and I do not think Chinese people are socially and culturally equipped to handle this increased amount of contact across social economical status and education backgrounds anymore than American people are in average in handling contact across races and gender identities, while having significant less developed and significantly more dysfunctional social institutes.
China's culture also glorifies cheating. So probably a huge percentage of them are not actually qualified with their printed phony credentials.
Care to elaborate? I never heard of this one.
I don't know about culture glorifying it or it being a huge percentage of people, but it's a real problem. Just one example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10132391/Riot-after-Chinese-teachers-try-to-stop-pupils-cheating.html
From what I heard from a teacher who was on exchange to China is that traditional Chinese education values the memorization and ability to rephrase or reproduce previous scholars' work, but neglects reflection and own ideas, especially if you are just a student. Western academic traditional to the contrast values the student's ability to evaluate, compare, and reflect on previous work. Hypothetically, a report that would give you a pass with distinction at a Chinese university would make a plagiarism checker cry at a Western university and vice versa.
Could very well be unfounded but in gaming circles there’s mention of Chinese people being raised to have a “win no matter what” mindset which leads them to cheat in video games.
Which is also a reason you see a lot of people call for region locking China.
Obviously it’s different to higher education but there is precedence in different circles.
It’s just unfounded racism
Not racism at all. Stereotype maybe.
Racist stereotypes are still racist
Don't know why the down votes. Yes you could argue the Chinese traditional cultures don't glorify cheating but then there's as much Chinese traditional culture in China today as there are the classical culture of the ancient Greeks in the US right now lol
In real life people praise taking unfair advantages to achieve what you want in popular cultures in today's China, where people praise it as a form of strength, sometimes even "wisdom", in a society where respect to established standards and moral principles is viewed as foolish. And you really can't blame them either considering such things as "established standards and moral principles" are the most popular ingredients of propaganda and political brainwashing, and a lot of Chinese people are actually not idiots who can't see that.
You only need to visit Chinese language social media now to see that everywhere.
You're thinking about the Nazis in America
The difference is how such behavior of individuals are perceived and reacted by other people. Yes such people exist in the US but in the US social institutions exist where when one acts like this the others will very openly reject and denounce such ways of thinking, and in the US for a long time such social institutions held great societal influences, while in China most people will praise instead.
But yeah now you see why in the US the Republicans have been so motivated in de-funding and ruining many of the already established social institutions
Really bro? Because there are Nazi salutes on your national TV. Are these "social institutions" that denounce such acts in the room with us right know?
And who TF elected such Nazi into the position of power? You 100% had it all coming lol