In today’s China stability trumps enterprise, argues the novelist
at the far reaches of the universe? This is a question that science has yet to answer, but most young people in China today already have an answer. According to them, at the end of the universe is not the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy or the Canes Venatici Constellation, but a government job.
If we were to describe the pace of economic development in the 1980s as walking, by the 1990s it was akin to a horse galloping. College graduates in particular turned their backs on the bureaucratic system in favour of seeking employment with foreign firms or joint ventures, or founding their own firms. The incentive was obvious: they could earn more, possibly a lot more, in the private sector.
For the past decade the number of Chinese college graduates applying for jobs in the civil service has surged. In 2023 some 2.8m applicants qualified for the civil-service examinations, chasing an estimated 39,000 available positions. The media described this as “an army of soldiers and horses attempting to cross a single-plank bridge”.
Shutdowns, layoffs, unemployment and bankruptcy have all become key words to describe the economy of today. For young Chinese, high-paying jobs are no longer the be-all and end-all; what they want are stable jobs within the state bureaucratic system. After living through three years of pandemic lockdowns, it is not only the young who have realised the importance of these bureaucratic jobs. Everyone has.
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