As the news of China’s growing unemployment continues to underscore the problems in the countryside, fueling fears of more social instability – a buzz phrase that essentially means that anyone with the least bit of sense is worried about the proverbial shit hitting the fan – an article in the Washington Post does nothing to calm the jitters: China’s Solution for Unemployed College Grads: State Jobs in the Boonies.
Chinese officials, spurred by the global financial crisis that has slowed economic growth and nervous about the prospects of more than 1.5 million unemployed college graduates, have stepped up spending and bolstered programs to help graduates get jobs, including a two-year-old plan to send people … to work as rural village officials. Unemployment among recent college graduates stands at 12 percent, according to government statistics, nearly triple the overall unemployment rate of 4.2 percent at the end of December, itself the highest in five years.
As migrant workers from around the country have made their way home for the Spring Festival holiday, the foremost thought on many of their minds has been, “What do we do next? Where can we possibly go to find more work?” Sending city college grads to the “boonies” to become “village officials” seems like a very obvious fanning of the flames. The country folks have had to carry the city folks a time or two in the not-so-distant past, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that it didn’t work out that well back then.
If the situation in the countryside does, in fact, get more unstable, the presence of what undoubtedly will be perceived by the rurals as more urban burden that they’ve been forced to carry may, indeed, turn into something much more explosive. This is hardly a solution, unless, of course, the scheme is to get as many possible problem youth out of the cities, so if (when?) things do go haywire, there will be less of them to deal with in the population centers. It is difficult to imagine that turning them out into the “boonies” will be either welcome or seen as the spreading of good will by those in the countryside whose memories of how they’ve been treated in the cities is still very fresh in their minds. There’s a whiff of potential disaster to this ill-advised “boonies” solution. I thought this was why we study history, why we try to learn from past mistakes.
6 responses so far ↓
1 chriswaugh_bj // Jan 31, 2009 at 11:40 am
Except that there’s nothing new about this new solution. This programme has been in place for a couple of years already (in fact, one of my wife’s friends joined up and has spent the last couple of years in Tongzhou District in the east of Beijing). There are two points to the programme: To relieve employment pressure in the cities- as you probably know, every new graduate seems to think they can walk into a high-paying, white collar job in the big cities; and to get better educated people out into the “boonies” to boost the quality of local government out there.
Anyways, the point is there’s nothing new about this programme, it’s been in place for a couple of years already, and it’s not the city dumping on the countryside.
2 jg // Jan 31, 2009 at 11:58 am
Well, Chris, I didn’t say that it was “new.” In fact, the paragraph I quoted from the WP report says that they’ve “stepped up spending and bolstered programs.” When the economy is cranking along at an acceptable clip and the country folks have places to go (cities) to earn money, putting up with city kids seems harmless enough. The article points out that many of the ‘jobs’ are, in fact, hollow positions. I am not sure how much time you’ve spent in the countryside, but I’ve seen how some of this works, and hollow is being kind. Now that the terrain is in the process of shifting, and more people in the countryside have fewer opportunities, I’m willing to bet that old resentments may again surface. This is nothing new, and that it will be seen as ‘city dumping’ is, I believe, just a matter of time.
3 chriswaugh_bj // Feb 1, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Well, now you got me thinking about why I reacted the way I did to your post and pondering the issues at hand. This, of course, is producing a response likely too long for a comment, and that response is being worked out on my own blog.
4 jg // Feb 1, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I will come for a visit. I am curious.
5 bezdomny ex patria » Blog Archive » why I’m not overly worried // Feb 1, 2009 at 10:20 pm
[...] what sparked this off was this post at Absurdity, Allegory and China. Something really irked me about it, and looking back and rereading I may well have misread or read [...]
6 stevelaudig // Feb 2, 2009 at 10:21 am
Instructive contrast to what the U.S. government is doing ala Wall Street.
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