Lazy Single Children?
One of China's major domestic tensions is between urban and rural development. One area within this topic that particularly interests me is how this tension is played out among urban and rural youth. This article points to how future employers view youth job seekers from urban and rural areas, saying that youth from single-child families will have to compete harder than their youth counterparts from job seekers from villages. Employers at this job fair pointed out how urban youth brought their parents with them, whereas non-local youth seemed much more confident.
There is reason why local youth are more coddled by their parents. City folks are allowed to have only 1 child while farmers are allowed to have more than one child if the first one is a male. Job recruiters say that youth who have siblings are used to working harder. We all know that single children get spoiled, especially in China.
My friends who are not from Beijing have had to work 10 times harder than local Beijingers to get to where they are. On top of a general mistrust of non-locals, there are walls to prevent non-locals from getting jobs and placement in the top universities - which are mostly in Beijing. If a student is a non-Beijing resident, she/he has test higher than a local Beijinger. If a non-local graduates from a Beijing university, then she/he has to return immediately to their province, unless a company is willing to sponsor their registration papers. This is only the beginning of China's employment struggle as the youth unemployment rate is already at an all time high with the impending shortage of young workers due to long-term effects of the one-child policy.
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