China’s Job Traps: Graduates Become Lambs to the Slaughter

A crowded job fair in Hebei Province. (Video screenshot)

[People News] On November 16, a knife attack at Wuxi Institute of Arts and Technology in Jiangsu Province, China,  left at least eight dead and 17 injured. According to police, the suspect’s motives included failing exams, not obtaining a graduation certificate, and dissatisfaction with internship wages. This extreme act of social revenge violence has brought widespread attention to the struggles faced by vocational school students upon graduation.

According to Voice of America, non-vocational college graduates face similar challenges. Despite the year-end approaching, the proportion of students securing quality employment contracts remains low. It is no longer rare for students to spend large sums on futile job hunts or even face extortion. Many graduates describe themselves as lambs to the slaughter.

Analysts believe that China’s job seekers bear an unsustainable burden, criticizing CCP policies for creating a chain of negative effects.

The Pain of “Screwing Bolts”

Li Qiang, founder and executive director of China Labor Watch in New York, told Voice of America: "Forced labor during internships is a prominent issue in China’s vocational education system. This includes mismatches between a student’s field of study and the work assigned to them. For example, whether you study accounting or early childhood education, you might be sent to work in an electronics factory or perform dangerous and grueling labor. Many vocational school students either refuse to go or leave shortly after starting."

However, leaving is not an easy option for these students. Li added: "A significant aspect of forced labor is that if students leave the internship positions arranged by their schools, they will not be issued graduation certificates. They are required to complete internships, which is the biggest problem. Moreover, in so-called school-enterprise collaborations, companies often pay students lower ‘internship wages’ instead of normal salaries. A portion of this money is taken by schools as management fees or under other pretexts, with some even going to the teachers who supervise these internships. As a result, the students receive very little money despite facing high labor intensity."

"When students are sent to screw bolts, they’re, of course, dissatisfied. Most vocational students are between 16 and 19 years old, sometimes a bit older, and they often come from economically disadvantaged families. This creates significant mental and physical stress for them."

Li believes that forced labor and exploitation are widespread in both public and private vocational schools in China. The CCP has acknowledged these issues to some extent, issuing bans on certain practices such as requiring students to pay internship deposits, management fees, or other charges, as well as the deduction of wages.

Zhao, who works in security at a state-owned enterprise in Hunan, told Voice of America that his son studied welding at a vocational high school and interned at Zhao’s workplace. "During the third year, my son stopped attending classes and began interning at the state-owned enterprise. It wasn’t too demanding, but some of his classmates, led by school teachers, went to factories in Dongguan. There, they not only worked as welders but also had to do other odd jobs, working six days a week for about 3,000 yuan a month. They learned some skills, but it was exhausting. Many didn’t stick to their professions after graduating. My son and one of his classmates eventually moved to Changsha to work in marketing."

Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in China, harshly criticized some vocational schools in an interview with the BBC. He noted that schools exploit students as "cheap labor," forcing them to work long hours on assembly lines. One reason for this is that schools earn "head fees," management fees, and service fees from enterprises through student internships.

Due to the CCP’s lack of transparency, the actual employment situation for China’s 2024 college graduates remains unclear. On November 18, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the unemployment rate for 16–24-year-olds not in school stood at 17.1% in October, unchanged from July and lower than September’s 17.6% and August’s 18.8%. However, since August 2023, the CCP has stopped reporting youth unemployment rates that include students.

Meanwhile, a new wave of job seekers is about to join the market. The CCP predicts that 12.22 million college students will graduate in 2025, an increase of 430,000 compared to 2024.

The difficulty of finding employment has left students feeling immense pressure. Two 2024 graduates from Zhejiang and Guangdong told Voice of America: "Our biggest confusion is not knowing what companies are looking for. Many job postings are either too vague or too flashy, and when we apply, we find they’re nothing like what we imagined. It’s a complete waste of time," one said. "Our schools offer very little help with finding jobs," added another.

Spending Money to Secure a Future

Despite widespread "involution" (excessive competition) and a growing "lying flat" mentality, data shows that under unprecedented employment pressure, Chinese college students are still trying various ways to enhance their job market competitiveness. According to Zhaopin's 2024 College Graduate Employment Competitiveness Report, early job-seeking and mass resume submissions have become significant trends. As many as 60.3% of 2024 graduates began looking for jobs as early as January 2023, a 10% increase compared to the 2023 graduates who started their search in January 2022. Additionally, 39.2% of graduates reported submitting more than 50 resumes, a noticeable rise from the 34.9% of 2022 graduates who did the same.

Another way students aim to improve their employability is by spending money on training. Xiao Chen, a 2024 graduate from a provincial university in Zhejiang, told Voice of America that to participate in civil service exams as a fresh graduate, he is currently interning at a neighborhood office in Ningbo, earning less than 2,000 yuan per month. However, he is willing to spend on civil service training: "So far, I've attended three training sessions. The cheapest cost around 6,000 yuan, while the most expensive reached 10,000 yuan. These primarily involve intensive, closed training sessions lasting up to three weeks, supplemented by online tutoring and Q&A sessions. My internship earnings don’t even cover the training fees, let alone daily expenses, so I have to rely on financial support from my family."

Various certificate training and job coaching agencies are thriving, but many college students have become victims of this "exam economy" and "job-seeking economy."

A 2024 graduate who recently found a job in Dongguan, Guangdong, shared her experience with Voice of America. She once enrolled in an "exam failure refund" training program for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, which cost over 8,000 yuan. The courses were delivered online, half live and half pre-recorded. While she passed the written exam, she failed the interview and didn’t receive the certificate. She tried to negotiate a refund: "The training institution had promised a full refund if I failed the exam, but when I requested the refund, they pointed to a contract I had signed. In black and white, it stated that students must attend all online classes to be eligible for a refund. I had missed some classes while job hunting and hadn’t read the contract details when I signed it. I felt like I had been duped."

Feeling exploited, the graduate consulted a legal firm online to explore recovering the training fees:
"But pursuing the fees required additional money and time. It felt like a never-ending trap, and I felt like a lamb to the slaughter. Eventually, I just let it go."

A veteran journalist in Beijing told Voice of America that the job coaching market in major cities like Beijing and provincial capitals is booming. At nearly every large job fair, there are numerous agencies offering services such as "guaranteed admission with payment" or "we’ll help you secure a job," specifically targeting fresh graduates:
"It’s not uncommon for fees to start at 10,000 yuan, with some charging tens of thousands. These programs are similar to the ‘civil service guaranteed pass’ classes. In reality, no agency can guarantee you’ll land an offer from your dream company. The more confident they sound, the more likely it is a scam."

Ordinary People Bear the Cost of CCP’s Policy Failures

How can Chinese university students escape the employment crisis? Several experts offer their advice. Li Qiang, founder and executive director of China Labor Watch in New York, suggests: "Learn a skill. I believe skills are the most important. Everyone should understand their own abilities. If you’re already at a disadvantage on the starting line in school, don’t compete with top-tier peers from 985 and 211 universities. Instead, focus on mastering a vocational skill and fully dedicating yourself to it. You might even end up excelling in your field."

A teacher at a provincial university in Guangdong shared his perspective with Voice of America. While he doesn’t want to discourage young people obsessed with civil service exams, he offered a candid assessment:
"Even if you rank second or third in the written exam, you still need connections to pass the interview stage. If you rank first in the written exam, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll succeed in the interview. Based on what my colleagues and I know, the reality of civil service exams is that major connections play a major role, and minor connections play a minor role. Whether it’s national or local civil service positions, there is room for connections to influence the interview process. In the end, most successful candidates have connections. For students without such connections, I suggest attempting the exam only once or twice. If you succeed, you’re a winner in life and clearly very capable. If you don’t, don’t lose confidence—it’s genuinely not your fault."

Lai Jung-Wei, Executive Director of Taiwan Motivation Association, Ph.D. in Law from National Chengchi University, and Assistant Professor at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, also addressed the fairness of civil service exams. He told Voice of America: "In Taiwan, civil service exams are primarily based on written tests, with interviews only required for specific roles. Compared to interviews, written tests are less likely to be influenced by connections."

Lai Jung-Wei, advises Chinese university students: "Whether you want to become a civil servant or venture into the job market, the first step is to evaluate whether what you’ve studied aligns with your future career goals and whether you truly enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you’ll have motivation. With motivation, you’ll stay longer and be able to produce significant work."

A veteran journalist in Beijing told Voice of America that one of the major reasons vocational school students face difficulties is insufficient government funding: "The root cause is inadequate official investment. Many training facilities and software programs are expensive, and when schools struggle financially, it ultimately leads to hardships for students."

Using higher vocational education as an example, data from Chinese government sources shows that in 2022, 5.3898 million students enrolled in higher vocational colleges, marking the fourth consecutive year in which this figure surpassed general undergraduate enrollment. However, funding distribution is unequal. China’s total higher education funding that year was 1.6397 trillion yuan, of which higher vocational colleges and specialized schools received a combined 339.2 billion yuan. Since specialized schools are not typically considered vocational education, rough estimates suggest that the funding allocation for higher vocational colleges is significantly lower than for non-vocational education.

Li Qiang told Voice of America that for many job seekers in China, including fresh graduates, the responsibility for their struggles lies only minimally with them: "Right now, China is focusing on domestic demand, right? It’s cracking down on private enterprises and prioritizing state-owned megacorporations, correct? And then there’s its alignment with Russia, which invites economic sanctions from the West. These are all results of CCP policies. The government designs economic strategies with a political focus, leading to a chain reaction of negative consequences. Ordinary people are left without options."