Youth and Globalization
Introduction
In the recent twelve years, China actively participates in globalization, especially the economic globalization, which has obviously affected many aspects of Chinese youth’s life, such as youth migration, youth employment, youth culture, youth consumption and so on. The profound influence of globalization on youth is determined by the characteristics of both globalization and youth.
1.1 What is globalization?
A Google search under the key word "globalization" yields more than 1.6 million hits — ample proof that both interest and definitions abound. From my perspective as an economist, globalization means a process of increasing international division of labor and the accompanying integration of national economies through trade in goods and services, cross-border corporate investments, and financial flows. This integration is boosted by technological progress, in particular in transport and communications. However, there is more to globalization than mere economics: globalization also means the free exchange of thoughts and ideas, and greater mobility of people. This is not something that is imposed upon us, but the result of forces for change that are deeply rooted in human nature: the drive for freedom and a better life, for new discoveries, and for a broader horizon
1.1.1 A brief history
Globalization is not a recent phenomenon. Even in the pre-Google days humans were reaching out for new frontiers. Back in the 11th century the Venetian Republic was an early force in globalization. The age of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch voyages of discovery gave further impetus to global integration through rapid advances in maritime technology. The discovery of electricity, the expansion of the railways, and the gold standard in the period from the mid-19th century to 1914 brought about an enormous increase in trade and financial integration. However, it is important to remember that this great wave of economic integration was interrupted in the first half of the 20th century by a phase of aggressive nationalism and protectionism in the aftermath of World War I, leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the catastrophe of another world war.
1.2 How to identify the Chinese Youth Generation
China’s Youth Generation (born between 1981 and 1995) is unlike any of its predecessors, sporting branded items and increasingly sharing some of the same ideas as Western youth. This generation of teenagers in China will most likely be the political and business leaders of the world’s next superpower by the year 2025.
"This generation will be running China in a few years. They are the next international politicians and business leaders, and their choices will affect us all."
2 Globalization and Chinese Youth
2.1 Youth—an important force in participating in the economic globalization
In the recent twelve years, China participates in economic globalization to a much larger extent. Chinese government actively engages in the process. From 1995, China has stepped into a new phase of opening-up and participating in the economic globalization. First, enhance free trade policy. Chinese import tax has descended from 35.9% in 1994 to 9.9% in 2006. The overcast rate of Chinese import non-tariff wall also fell from 32.5% in 1996 to under 10% in 2006.
Second, utilize oversea capital, resource and technology actively. From 1995 to 2006, China had accumulatively used overseas capital of about US$809.13 billion, which was a huge increase. During the decade China’s import assumed a constant growth trend. The import quantum rose from US$132.08 billion in 1995 to US$ 561.38 billion in 2005.
Third, implement the “Go Out” Strategy, participating in international competitions and targeting at international market. Chinese government adopts many measures to encourage enterprises to participate in international competitions. For example, China encourages export through tax rebate, which leads to a quick rise of the export quantum from US$ 148.78 billion in 1995 to US$ 660.1 billion in 2005. With continuous advancement of Chinese enterprises’ competitiveness, they began to invest more and more in establishing factories abroad, which gave an impetus to the export of commodities and labor service.
Fourth, enter the World Trade Organization and involving in the world economy all-roundly. With the 15 years persistent efforts China finally became a member of the World Trade Organization, which was a mark of Chinese economy starting to integrate into the world economy all-roundly. Entering the World Trade Organization not only produced profound effect to Chinese economy but also to the development and life of Chinese youth, and lifted the process of the integration of Chinese and world economy ahead to a new level. For about twelve years, the proportion of Chinese foreign trade dependence rate has risen from 40% in 1995 to 65% in 2006, of which the export dependence rate has risen from 21% to 35% and the import dependence rate from 19% to 30%. The remarkably increase of trade dependence rate indicates that the linkage between internal economy and the external is getting closer and closer, and the degree of integration with the world economy increases sharply.
Chinese youth is one of the most important forces of China participating in the process of economic globalization. China is now experiencing times of fast innovation and active involvement in the world economy. The youth are the main adventurer, beneficiary and risk-takers. Youth has their own special advantages in the economic globalization, so that they’ve become one of the most important forces in China involving in the economic globalization. First of all, the educational level of the contemporary Chinese young people has been increased greatly, which lay the basis for their participation in the economic globalization; secondly, they have a strong consciousness of openness and participation. In 2004, a questionnaire about the employment aspiration of the youth in Shanghai indicated that 10 percent of them consider finding jobs abroad as a choice. Furthermore, for the time being, Chinese youth especially in urban youth are the major beneficiaries in the economic globalization, which promote their participation in this process.
2.2 Globalization influences Chinese young people’s study, culture and consumption
The state policy of reform and opening-up and the gesture of actively involving in globalization deeply influence the study, culture and consumption of Chinese youth. Learning English is important for Chinese youth and they believe that it’s a necessary skill for their further development. From elementary school, English language has become a compulsory course. At the college entrance examination, which is a decisive moment to Chinese young people, English is among the major examinations paralleled with Chinese language and math. Almost all the colleges and universities in China have listed English as a reference for getting the degree. The long-term emphasis and investment have greatly improved the English level of Chinese young people, which is the basis and advantage for their involvement in the globalization. To study abroad is a short cut for Chinese young people growing up into high-level talent, which is the ideal of many aspired youth .In the recent decade there have been more and more people who have realized their dreams. Not only more and more Chinese youth study abroad but also more and more students return to the motherland and contribute to the development of the country. The numbers of those who study abroad and return to China were 20,381 and 5,750 respectively in 1995. In 2002 the figure increased to 125,179 and 17,945 respectively and that of in 2003 were 117,307 and 20,152. In 2006, the figure is 134,000 and 42,000. From 1978 to the end of 2006, the number of various personnel studying abroad totaled 1,067,000. The returned overseas students totaled 275,000.
Globalization greatly influences the culture and consumption of Chinese young people and makes the two parts tangling together and presenting many new features. Through television, music video, film, especially the internet which is wide spreading in recent years, the entertainment programs made in America and Europe are becoming more and more prevailing. In recent years, the Internet games and television series of some Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea have occupied an important part of Chinese young people’s culture lives. Investigation shows that about 50% of Chinese young students choose European and American popular entertainment programs as their main entertainment. In recent years, the Internet games and TV series of Japan and Korea have become more and more popular in Chinese market among young people. The entertaining trend in the culture and the development of modern media has led to global consumptionism, including China. Many researches and facts indicate that young people both in urban and rural areas obviously show the tendency of consumptionism in the 21st century of China. One of the worrying qualities of young people in today’s China is lacking the conception of moderate consumption. Nowadays, hundreds of millions of teenagers learn the life through television, film, MTV, Internet and Internet games, by which they form their view of the world, view of life and value about what’s right and what’s wrong, consider and confirm the relationship between the society and themselves. Consumption has become a major way of contemporary young people to express and identify themselves. All the above are the deep effects brought by the globalization to Chinese young people. What need to be pointed out is that young people adapt and annotate global production often by their own culture and experience. Therefore their understanding of globalization is quite different because of the huge discrepancy in their education and the inequality between rich and poor. Therefore some young people have the feeling of alienation, which maybe will result in crime or social conflicts.
2.3 The influence of globalization on the migration of Chinese youth
Globalization greatly changed the situation of Chinese young people’s migration and employment. Because of the rapid development of economy and the process of urbanization, there in China appears a large scale of migration. It is estimated that there were about 80 million farmers moving from rural areas to urban areas for jobs, of which people under 35-year-old occupied 70 percent in 1995. In 2006 the migration expanded from 150 million to even 140 million, the proportion of people under 35-year-old accounted for 70 percent. There are thousands of young people holding a beautiful dream moving from countryside to city in hope of having a brighter future.
2.4 The influence of globalization on the employment of Chinese youth
The economic globalization stimulated employment, especially providing more opportunities for those competitive young people. In 2005, 12.45 million people were directly employed in foreign-invested enterprises accountings for 4.56% of the total urban employment of the same period. The development of foreign invested enterprises provided Chinese young people many opportunities. Foreign enterprises came to China with capital, talents, management and experiences, offering youth favorable job opportunities. For over a decade, many young people considered working at foreign enterprises especially in multinational corporations as an honor. Globalization brings opportunities for Chinese young people to work abroad. With the linkage between Chinese and the world economy becoming closer and closer, Chinese young people have more opportunities to study and work abroad, and their footprints spread all over the world. Globalization means intense competition. Chinese young people still bear great pressure of employment although the economy increases rapidly. In recent years, the employment rate of Chinese college graduates presented a downward trend，and the proportion of that in 2005 was 72.6%.
Considering the remnant influence inherited from China’s traditional planned economic system, the impacts on youth employment brought by globalization have been extremely strong in the course of transition to the market economy and industrialization. The youth are faced with severe employment challenges regardless of the numerous policies and measures taken by the Chinese government and social partners for promoting youth employment.
2.4.1 Youth Employment situation in China under the background of globalization
Globalization refers to trend of world economic and social integration, including the process of formation of common markets and game rules, and integration of cultures. In that process, all parties take various economic, political and cultural measures to compete globally for grabbing resources, interests and for gaining their say. In addition to impacts from global economic factors, labor markets are also subject to interference of political factors, where the outcomes hence become complex.
As newcomers in the markets, young people are faced with ever-increasing employment vulnerability in the context of increased labor market variables as a result of globalization. The employment hardness embedded into the following five aspects.
2.4.1.1 Limited Openings from Public Sector leading to intense competition
In the traditional system, State-owned institutions monopolized all sectors, which reserved huge amount of surplus labor force. In the transition course, such institutions have received a variety of ownership reforms and entered the market. Remaining State-owned institutions, which are relatively small in number, are mostly engaged in critical industries and sectors relating to the national economy and the people’s livelihood and offer relatively good pay and employment stability by virtue of their monopoly position, which has made them the desired employers of most young people. China’s first “School to work transition” survey shows that more than 50% young people wish to enter governmental agencies and State-owned enterprises, nearly 1/4 want to carve out their own business, and only about 1/4 desire employment in other types of institutions.
Opposite to the desire of the youth, jobs from the public sector are very limited. In 2004, China had 400 million people employed in non-agricultural sectors, only less than 38 million and 30 million of them were in public institutions and State-owned enterprises respectively, accounting for less than 10% and 8% separately and aggregately below 1/5 of the total. In general, jobs from public institutions are very limited.
Further, there are also very few new job opportunities in the sector. In 2004, there were 1 million government agencies, party agencies, social organizations and other public agencies in China and less than 300,000 State-owned justice person enterprises. Only some of them were in major and medium-sized cities. Regardless of the huge reduction of staff, the sector still has a considerable number of inefficient employees and has the problem of huge staff but low efficiency, which remains serious compared internationally. In that context, many public institutions have implemented the policy of “zero staff increase”, which has further reduced new openings and resulted in fiercer employment competition.
At present, jobs in the public sector generally require education above master’s degree, which has led to young people excessive pursuit of higher educational levels, bringing the admission rate of entrance examinations for master’s degree education to one several hundreds. The number of college graduates in China has reached 3 million in 2004, and about 500,000 of them have above master’s degrees. Many people compete fiercely for entering the public sector. Only one out of every several hundred people succeeds in public civilians’ examinations, and hundreds will register for examination even when there is only one vacancy, which is similarly seen in some monopoly industries. Besides, young people see relatively slow promotion after entering the sector due to the impossibility of quickly changing the traditional employment mechanism.
The acute unbalance between labor supply and demand in the public sector has made the employment of high-quality young people a very serious problem.
2.4.1.2 Jobs from traditional low-end advantageous sectors are becoming increasing insufficient
In the traditional planned economic system, China adopted the policy of closing the country to the international world and the economy ran in a closed manner. In 1978, the economy started to open up to the outside world, and then embarked on GATT negotiations in 1986 and WTO negotiations in 1995, which symbolize faster integration of China with the world economy. In 2001, China officially entered into the World Trade Organization. Throughout the course of the integration, the advantages China enjoy by virtue of its huge amount and low cost of rural labor force have been fully developed, China has gained significant shares of international markets of low-end products through such channels as processing sector trade. During the internationalization, many young rural people have found non-farming jobs, increased their income and promoted growth of the economy. The internationalization is an important source of China’s economic growth, industrialization, urbanization and employment increase.
However, globalization of developing countries is at all times under control of developed nations. In the international industry chain, developed countries control technologies and are key importers of products from developing economies. On one hand, developed countries gain huge profits and constantly narrow room for profit of processing industries of low technology content in developing economies by controlling the entire product processing and export chain, and in turn limit employment increase in terms of quantum and quality. On the other hand, developed nations limit technology transfers to a developing country, which hampers smooth adjustment of their domestic industry structures and often leads to trade deficit. To solve the deficit, they then exert pressure on developing economies for appreciation of the latter’s currencies, which further limits the development and the number of jobs in industries in the latter that are of low technology but high labor content.
To sum up, the unequal globalization dominated by developing economies will lead to an ever-expanding gap between developed nations and developing ones, and ever-decreasing job opportunities for general labor force in the latter. Although 200-300million laborers have been transferred from rural areas and the country’s urbanization rate has reached 40%, a huge amount of poorly qualified and skilled labor force still remains in rural areas and needs to be diverted to non-agricultural sectors. Pursuing fair globalization is the ultimate solution for promoting youth employment.
2.4.1.3 Under the pressure of globalization, youth human resources has been malignantly developed, which has resulted in insufficient supply of young labor force
China has a huge labor force supply in aggregate. According to the national census conducted in 2000, the population at working ages of 16 and above was 883.35 million, of which 688.89 million participated in labor market activities, including 115.28 million Young people aged between 16 and 24, accounting for 17%. In addition, there are nearly 10 million unemployed people in towns and cities, and the national net increase of working-age population exceeds 10 million people per annum. Compared with demand, the total labor force supply is huge.
New labor force demands mainly come from the private sector. Private enterprises run flexibly and have lower requirements on quality of labor force, thus being employers of a majority of the youth. According to China’s first “School to work transition” survey, nearly 70% young people work in private enterprises. Facing the pressure from global competition, the private sector makes every effort to lower labor cost, causing severe waste of young human resources. First, private enterprises only employ young people aged between 18 and 25, and replace them with new recruiters once they are beyond that “golden” section of age.
Second, they only use young employees but never provide training to them. Third, the youth lack employment protection and social security. According to said survey, more than 60% young people have not signed employment contracts or only signed contracts for less than 1 year, their average working hours per week are more than the nation’s statutory amount, their pay level is low, many of them enjoy no social security and welfares to which they are entitled, and most of them have never received any form of training. This practice of dealing with young human resources, just like draining the pond to get all the fish, has led to insufficiency of effective supply of young labor force, turned today’s labor force into tomorrow’s burden of society, and further exerted heavier gross and structural employment pressures.
In short, accession to globalization will often cause developing countries to pursue economic growth at the cost of inefficient resource utilization in the context of low economic development level in order to solve the problems of employment and survival, which will ultimately lead to waste of valuable resources, including young human resources.
2.4.1.4 Globalization has led to faster changes of technologies and ways of production, to which youth are difficult to adapt due to quality limitations
In general, general educational level of Chinese youth is ever improving as result of better economic growth and education quality, continuous enrollment rates of schools at all levels and constant expansion of higher education, most of them have received junior high school education, and the number enrolled in 2004 for general higher education reached 4.5 million. However, Chinese youth are remarkably disadvantageous in terms of educational level in the context of globalization. According to the 5th national census in 2000, 61% of youth had received junior high school education, 19% primary education, 8% senior high school and 7% secondary vocational education, and the figure for higher education was below 5%. Even though higher educational institutions are expanding enrollment year over year by 20% averagely, a broad gap still exists compared with the higher education enrollment rate of more than 30% in some developed nations.
Youth Educational Levels Information technology is the fundamental technology of globalization, which has not only created new patters of production and employment, but also reformed traditional production models. In China, most youth live a life on informal employment of poor technology content due to limitations of the economic development level, and the popularity of new production-related information technologies remains low among employed young people, who have far less opportunities of access to new information technology-based production patterns than their peers in developed countries. According to China’s first “school to work transition” survey, industries where youth are primarily employed include manufacturing (20%), wholesale and retail (15%), residents-aimed service (10%), information transmission and software (8%), transportation (7%) and board and lodging (6%) industries. 70% of youth take physical strength-based or simple technical jobs and only less than 20% have successfully got employed soon after leaving school. When young people in developed countries do modeling using advanced information technologies, most of Chinese youth is still learning simple charting.
In short, due to difference in economic development level, globalization with information technology as the feature will make it difficult for youth in developing countries to adapt to quality requirements of the new economy and cause an ever-expanding gap between them and other parts of the world if without artificially driven communication and transfer of technologies and knowledge to the countries. Lack of knowledge and technologies is worse than scarcity of materials.
Further, similarly due to young labor force’s quality being unable to adapt to the requirements of globalization, and to insufficient information, only an extremely low percent of young Chinese people get employed in foreign countries regardless of the ever-increasing number of them studying abroad.
2.4.1.5 Unemployment, underemployment and inactivity issues becoming more serious
In the context of globalization, bad labor market conditions have severely affected youth’s behavior there. Some good students will extend their school years for higher education, but doing so will only defer their entry into labor markets and will not ease the employment pressure, and they will even be faced with a higher unemployment rate than young people with lower education after their graduation and entry into the markets.
Most of young people go to labor markets after finishing secondary education. They are particularly difficult to find jobs and see the highest unemployment rate as they are not qualified for higher posts but unwilling to accept lower ones, for instance, the unemployment rate of each of the groups of youth of senior high school, technical school and college education is above 15%. On the other hand, they also involve underemployment reflected by insufficient income and their overtime percent is above the average (the percents of young people working 6 days and 7 days per week are 2% above the averages respectively).
Young people of poor educational level have no choice and will feel satisfied as long as they can find jobs, so their unemployment rate is the lowest. However, their underemployment rate is the highest. 8.2% of total employed work less than 3 days per week and the figure for employed young people aged between 16 and 19 is 8.7%.
In summary, in the context of globalization, employment pressure will exist for a long period in the youth labor market. There will be more young people falling in the state of underemployment reflected as insufficient working time or income, or in unemployment, and temporarily exit labor markets with the hope of returning there someday (1/4 of youth have withdrawn from labor markets with causes unidentified), the problems of unemployment, underemployment and inactivity have become worse, and young human resources have been wasted seriously.
Percents of Youth of Different Educational Levels in Inactivity,
Unemployment and Employment
2.4.2 Social Partners’ Measures Responding to Employment Impacts from Globalization
Just like all other countries in the world, China has taken many effective measures to deal with the impacts of globalization on youth employment, of which the core is to create job opportunities for young people.
2.4.2.1 Special preferential policies aiming at college graduates have helped solve the problem of structural unemployment of high-quality labor force
The Chinese government has launched files in recent three years consecutively to encourage college graduates’ employment, which contain some policy breakthroughs for employment through flows of the graduates, that is, a number of job opportunities are supported and created in western, grassroots and hard-condition regions to solve the employment problem of the graduates and meanwhile promote local economic and social development. The government bears costs of creating the jobs. The policy breakthroughs mainly involve removal of permanent registered residence restriction, future employment promises, preferred access to education, etc. In terms of employment promotion, these measures are substitutes instead of complements effects.
Besides, policies for promoting flow of college graduates for employment also include removal of unauthorized and unreasonable administrative charges upon college graduates taking jobs in provinces or municipalities other than their origins. Cities at and below provincial capital level have canceled residence registration restrictions on non-local college graduates. Cities above provincial capital level should also loosen such restrictions and simplify relevant procedures as needed. This policy is a genuine market-oriented action going for the promotion of youth employment.
The core of these policies is to attract college graduates to nonpublic employers through improving law enforcement and services for them, enhancing employment conditions in nonpublic institutions and protecting the legal rights and interests of college graduates working for them. Specific processes include supervising and urging the employers to sign employment contracts, pay remunerations and cover social security for their college-graduate employees. These measures help ease the structural employment pressure of college graduates and improve the quality of their employment.
These policies primarily involve the exemption of registration and administrative charges to college graduates in start-up stage of their own businesses, which is equal to a type of financial subsidy used to ease employment pressure. The policies are apparently temporary and are not intended to promote stable entrepreneurship by youth.
2.4.2.2 Provide unemployed youth with help and support based on neighborhoods as the platforms
China’s labor market structure consists of “four levels of governments, four tiers of administration and five layers of networks, under the fourth level of governments (district/county governments) are organs (sub-districts) dispatched by the governments, under each sub-district are many resident autonomous organizations (neighborhoods), and each neighborhood is comprehensive of a number of residents’ committees (residents’ buildings). Faced with the ever-increasing severity of the employment situation, governments have strengthened the construction and improvement of the system of employment administration and service organizations and set up social security platforms in sub-districts, neighborhoods and townships based on existing organizational networks to manage rural and urban labor force and employment as a whole, bring into full play the service functions of neighborhood in terms of employment and social security, and have thus established channels offering practical help to youth. The following work has been done based on sub-districts and neighborhoods as the platforms:
2.4.2.2.1 Obtain a full knowledge of conditions of youth not in employment
Through home interviews, some neighborhoods have achieved a full knowledge of young people not in employment and college and secondary technical school graduates covering cause of unemployment, family condition, ideological trends, skills, strong points and job requirements, hence creating conditions for taking appropriate measures to help or support them. At present, the Chinese government is proceeding with the “golden security” project, under which a nationwide integrated, efficient and practical labor protection information system will be established, which will further help promote youth employment.
2.4.2.2.2 Provide youth with living relief and help through diversified channels
Local governments and neighborhoods have carried out pertinent activities to help and support young people out of employment depending on their respective circumstances. For instance, help is offered to each “zero-employment household” by finding a job for one child of the household; when conditions permit, cities and neighborhoods organize college graduates registered unemployment with them to participate in temporary social jobs, public welfare activities, or work on internship for certain pay; and civil affairs administrations provide temporary relief with reference to local “basic living security” standard to those prevented from employment due to such reasons as illness and identified to have no income source. These measures have to some extent mitigated financial difficulties of unemployed youth.
2.4.2.2.3 Organize and develop new jobs in diversified forms
Primary practices include selecting capable young people and graduates enthusiastic about neighborhood services to take grassroots labor protection jobs through public recruiting during the construction of labor protection platforms of sub-districts and neighborhoods, and provide support to enterprises absorbing young people according to documented policies regardless of their forms of ownership.
However, the current situation indicates that the support to youth employment is not powerful enough, which generally excludes post-specific allowances and social security subsidies, and less public welfare jobs are offered to youth.
2.4.2.2.4 Permit unemployment registration and access to employment services.
By presenting certificates from their colleges or universities, college graduates unable to get employed more than half a year after graduation and requesting jobs are permitted to fulfill unemployment registration with the labor protection administrations in the cities or counties where their permanent residence were registered before going to college or university. Public job centers and neighborhood labor protection agencies will provide them with free-of-charge employment services.
2.4.2.3 Education and Training for Youth
Education and training for youth is the key measure to promote youth employment. Specific practices include:
2.4.2.3.1 Youth “Vocational Internship” Program
In recent years, a “vocational internship” program has been launched in some developed regions specifically for young unemployed people, under which some technologically advanced enterprises of better management and certain publicity in their respective industries are selected as internship employers, where young unemployed people under the program work on internship at some posts of high technology content for three to six months, but in no case for more than one year, in order to improve their competitiveness in job hunting. For the young people working on internship, governments provide living expense allowance and cover comprehensive insurance for the internship duration, and also certain compensation to the employers. The program has gained praise and appreciation from enterprises, young unemployed people and their families. The program can help young people acquire professional skills, working experience, labor law and regulation knowledge and spirit of respect to job that match developments of new industries, but is faced with many limitations during its implementation, mainly arising from the prerequisite that economic growth engines, potential job opportunities must be available in the local places, and that the governments must be able to afford it financially.
2.4.2.3.2 Establish public training bases
Some public training bases have been established also in eastern regions to provide free-of-charge vocational skill training and practicing facilities to educational and training institutions of all types, and to provide vocational skill identification services for promoting the cultivation of highly skilled human resources.
2.4.2.3.3 Provide entrepreneurship training
By improving international experiences depending on conditions in China, the
Chinese government and its social partners have developed many entrepreneurship training programs, which, among others, aim at college students and young unemployed people, and primarily involve the following components: improving young people’s awareness and basic skills of entrepreneurship through providing them with entrepreneurship training; offering business opening guidance to help business carvers obtain fundamental business startup skill; provide enterprise incubation to enhance business carvers’ physical operating capabilities; provide financing services to improve the carvers’ awareness of good faith and ability of capital operation; and offer follow-up services to promote their business running capabilities. However, all associated chains are still under progress and only a very limited number of young people can enjoy the services.
2.4.2.3.4 Provide rural labor force with internal-migrant employment training and training of technologies applicable in rural areas
Funds are offered from governments to finance training of law promulgation, common knowledge of living and production skills to young labor force from rural areas in order to heighten the stability of their internal migration employment, and training of technologies applicable in rural areas to young people working in the areas to help improve their productivity.
2.4.2.3.5 Improve vocational education
In consideration of the current situation that China is in short of skilled labor force and in limited supply of access to education, the country will make effort to improve vocational education in a relatively long period. Specific measures include the following. First, enlarge financial investment in construction of vocational education infrastructure, such as school building and teacher training, with particular focus placed on rural areas. Second, reform the mechanism of vocational education and encourage diversified cooperation between eastern and western regions, cities and rural areas, and schools and enterprises. Third, establish the student support system for students from poor families, including arranging support from government finance, organizing the students to participate in part-work and part-study, covering students from poor families under national student loans, and offering tuition reduction or exemption, living expense allowance and appropriate vocational skill identification fee reduction to students from such families. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go.
2.4.2.3.6 Training in Enterprises
It is also a focus of the government to promote the improvement of on-the-job training of youth to continuously improve their adaptability to new technologies.
2.4.3 Recommended Countermeasures against Globalization Impacts on Youth
Youth problems will be increasingly highlighted along with the progress of globalization, the development of China’s economy and society and the gradual improvement of its market economic system, and will become among the most important social problems. The following recommendations are proposed in response to the current situation and challenges in employment of Chinese youth:
2.4.3.1 The United Nations should make greater effort to promote global resolution of youth problems
As a matter of fact, it was expressly brought forward in the Millennium Declaration released on the Millennium Conference to “formulate and implement strategies to provide opportunities for young people around the world to find due productive jobs” , proposing new political undertakings for solving the employment problem of youth around the world and new types of partnerships entered into for that purpose by governments of various countries and global organizations, putting youth-related public policies under the entire employment policy, and making full employment as the foremost goal of global economic and social strategies as well as national policies. The UN employment policy network has later been established to offer views and experiences of the best solutions to the challenge of youth employment.
In the coming 10 years, the world’s young population will continue to expand, with the growth mainly from developing countries, including Asia as one of the major sources of the growth. Therefore, the international community with UN as the major part should make in-dept research of Asian youth problems by topic and by country in order to provide reference for the formulation of pertinent policies and measures. To deal with the challenge of globalization, public policies for promoting youth employment are required to be global and national. All countries, particularly the developed ones, should review, reconsider and adjust old policies and implement new policies to pursue social development benefiting all people, and to ensure the sustainability of the global economy, society and environment. In that regard, global strategies must be mandatory to some extent and may not exclude consideration of the actual conditions of developing nations.
Global policies for promoting youth employment should place focus particularly on the communication and development of knowledge and technologies to and among young people in developing countries.
2.4.3.2 Reform the public education system to strengthen its connection with labor market needs
Educational, vocational training and labor market policies should be reviewed, reconsidered and adjusted to create favorable conditions for young people’s smooth transition from schools, colleges and universities to jobs, and a good start for their future career lives. Services and support from labor markets should be extended upstream, and just like the reversal pressure mechanism of university entrance examinations on primary and secondary school education, practical and effective vocational education and guidance should be implemented since primary school education to provide clear occupation directions. On the contrary, common education as a way of offering knowledge and cultivating the ability to acquire knowledge should not train students using the methods of scientific research personnel training in order to pursue the knowledge and abilities required in scientific research, and should instead play the role of occupation guiding. While the occupation directing function of diploma education gets diminished and eliminated, its reversal pressure effect will decline increasingly and only in that way can the vicious cycle of poor education and training, inability to find good gobs and poor life of young people be broken, and jobs and social justice be brought to youth. In this regard, UN should play the role it ought to play.
2.4.3.3 Formulate employment-promoting policies benefiting all young people
Due to limited financial strength of the nation, most of prevailing policies only benefit minority of youth. In the future, all these policies are to be extended to all young people, so that they can really benefit all members of the young population. In this regard, UN should again play the role it is supposed to have.
3 Chinese young people concern and review the effect of the globalization
Globalization is both opportunities and challenges to China, the most populous developing country. Chinese government considers that the tendency of economic globalization is deeply influencing many aspects such as global economy, politics and social life. In the process of economic globalization, the status and situation of different countries are very different. Developed countries enjoy the benefit of globalization, while most developing countries are suffering the pain of poverty, which is not only adverse to the development of the world economy but also threatening the peace of the world. We need and all-win economic globalization among all the countries under the rules of equality, fairness and coexistence. Chinese youth take part in the economic globalization actively. At the same time, they deeply concern with and reflect on the negative effects of globalization, mainly at the following four aspects: First, disparity between rich and poor. The wealth gap is widening between developing country and developed country. This result is opposite to the ideal of global fairness and Justice. Second, environmental deterioration. On one hand China is the factory of the world, on the other hand China becomes a refuse dump where some developed countries dispose of their industrial waste. Chinese youth is worried and discontented about that. Third, the development of national industry. With the rapid growth of foreign enterprises, national industry yielded step by step. Fourth, the inheritance of national culture. Economic globalization brings the cultural globalization. It remains a problem how Chinese youth treat the traditional culture and western culture in the right way and how to face the cultural demand under the background of globalization. In addition, under the background of globalization, the popular thought of consumption among youth is inconsistent with the lack of per capita resources, which is also an important aspect of the negative effects of globalization.
In the recent twelve years, China actively participates in globalization, especially the economic globalization, which has obviously affected many aspects of Chinese youth’s life, such as youth migration, youth employment, youth culture, youth consumption and so on. The profound influence of globalization on youth is determined by the characteristics of both globalization and youth.
1.1 What is globalization?
A Google search under the key word "globalization" yields more than 1.6 million hits — ample proof that both interest and definitions abound. From my perspective as an economist, globalization means a process of increasing international division of labor and the accompanying integration of national economies through trade in goods and services, cross-border corporate investments, and financial flows. This integration is boosted by technological progress, in particular in transport and communications. However, there is more to globalization than mere economics: globalization also means the free exchange of thoughts and ideas, and greater mobility of people. This is not something that is imposed upon us, but the result of forces for change that are deeply rooted in human nature: the drive for freedom and a better life, for new discoveries, and for a broader horizon
1.1.1 A brief history
Globalization is not a recent phenomenon. Even in the pre-Google days humans were reaching out for new frontiers. Back in the 11th century the Venetian Republic was an early force in globalization. The age of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch voyages of discovery gave further impetus to global integration through rapid advances in maritime technology. The discovery of electricity, the expansion of the railways, and the gold standard in the period from the mid-19th century to 1914 brought about an enormous increase in trade and financial integration. However, it is important to remember that this great wave of economic integration was interrupted in the first half of the 20th century by a phase of aggressive nationalism and protectionism in the aftermath of World War I, leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the catastrophe of another world war.
1.2 How to identify the Chinese Youth Generation
China’s Youth Generation (born between 1981 and 1995) is unlike any of its predecessors, sporting branded items and increasingly sharing some of the same ideas as Western youth. This generation of teenagers in China will most likely be the political and business leaders of the world’s next superpower by the year 2025.
"This generation will be running China in a few years. They are the next international politicians and business leaders, and their choices will affect us all."
2 Globalization and Chinese Youth
2.1 Youth—an important force in participating in the economic globalization
In the recent twelve years, China participates in economic globalization to a much larger extent. Chinese government actively engages in the process. From 1995, China has stepped into a new phase of opening-up and participating in the economic globalization. First, enhance free trade policy. Chinese import tax has descended from 35.9% in 1994 to 9.9% in 2006. The overcast rate of Chinese import non-tariff wall also fell from 32.5% in 1996 to under 10% in 2006.
Second, utilize oversea capital, resource and technology actively. From 1995 to 2006, China had accumulatively used overseas capital of about US$809.13 billion, which was a huge increase. During the decade China’s import assumed a constant growth trend. The import quantum rose from US$132.08 billion in 1995 to US$ 561.38 billion in 2005.
Third, implement the “Go Out” Strategy, participating in international competitions and targeting at international market. Chinese government adopts many measures to encourage enterprises to participate in international competitions. For example, China encourages export through tax rebate, which leads to a quick rise of the export quantum from US$ 148.78 billion in 1995 to US$ 660.1 billion in 2005. With continuous advancement of Chinese enterprises’ competitiveness, they began to invest more and more in establishing factories abroad, which gave an impetus to the export of commodities and labor service.
Fourth, enter the World Trade Organization and involving in the world economy all-roundly. With the 15 years persistent efforts China finally became a member of the World Trade Organization, which was a mark of Chinese economy starting to integrate into the world economy all-roundly. Entering the World Trade Organization not only produced profound effect to Chinese economy but also to the development and life of Chinese youth, and lifted the process of the integration of Chinese and world economy ahead to a new level. For about twelve years, the proportion of Chinese foreign trade dependence rate has risen from 40% in 1995 to 65% in 2006, of which the export dependence rate has risen from 21% to 35% and the import dependence rate from 19% to 30%. The remarkably increase of trade dependence rate indicates that the linkage between internal economy and the external is getting closer and closer, and the degree of integration with the world economy increases sharply.
Chinese youth is one of the most important forces of China participating in the process of economic globalization. China is now experiencing times of fast innovation and active involvement in the world economy. The youth are the main adventurer, beneficiary and risk-takers. Youth has their own special advantages in the economic globalization, so that they’ve become one of the most important forces in China involving in the economic globalization. First of all, the educational level of the contemporary Chinese young people has been increased greatly, which lay the basis for their participation in the economic globalization; secondly, they have a strong consciousness of openness and participation. In 2004, a questionnaire about the employment aspiration of the youth in Shanghai indicated that 10 percent of them consider finding jobs abroad as a choice. Furthermore, for the time being, Chinese youth especially in urban youth are the major beneficiaries in the economic globalization, which promote their participation in this process.
2.2 Globalization influences Chinese young people’s study, culture and consumption
The state policy of reform and opening-up and the gesture of actively involving in globalization deeply influence the study, culture and consumption of Chinese youth. Learning English is important for Chinese youth and they believe that it’s a necessary skill for their further development. From elementary school, English language has become a compulsory course. At the college entrance examination, which is a decisive moment to Chinese young people, English is among the major examinations paralleled with Chinese language and math. Almost all the colleges and universities in China have listed English as a reference for getting the degree. The long-term emphasis and investment have greatly improved the English level of Chinese young people, which is the basis and advantage for their involvement in the globalization. To study abroad is a short cut for Chinese young people growing up into high-level talent, which is the ideal of many aspired youth .In the recent decade there have been more and more people who have realized their dreams. Not only more and more Chinese youth study abroad but also more and more students return to the motherland and contribute to the development of the country. The numbers of those who study abroad and return to China were 20,381 and 5,750 respectively in 1995. In 2002 the figure increased to 125,179 and 17,945 respectively and that of in 2003 were 117,307 and 20,152. In 2006, the figure is 134,000 and 42,000. From 1978 to the end of 2006, the number of various personnel studying abroad totaled 1,067,000. The returned overseas students totaled 275,000.
Globalization greatly influences the culture and consumption of Chinese young people and makes the two parts tangling together and presenting many new features. Through television, music video, film, especially the internet which is wide spreading in recent years, the entertainment programs made in America and Europe are becoming more and more prevailing. In recent years, the Internet games and television series of some Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea have occupied an important part of Chinese young people’s culture lives. Investigation shows that about 50% of Chinese young students choose European and American popular entertainment programs as their main entertainment. In recent years, the Internet games and TV series of Japan and Korea have become more and more popular in Chinese market among young people. The entertaining trend in the culture and the development of modern media has led to global consumptionism, including China. Many researches and facts indicate that young people both in urban and rural areas obviously show the tendency of consumptionism in the 21st century of China. One of the worrying qualities of young people in today’s China is lacking the conception of moderate consumption. Nowadays, hundreds of millions of teenagers learn the life through television, film, MTV, Internet and Internet games, by which they form their view of the world, view of life and value about what’s right and what’s wrong, consider and confirm the relationship between the society and themselves. Consumption has become a major way of contemporary young people to express and identify themselves. All the above are the deep effects brought by the globalization to Chinese young people. What need to be pointed out is that young people adapt and annotate global production often by their own culture and experience. Therefore their understanding of globalization is quite different because of the huge discrepancy in their education and the inequality between rich and poor. Therefore some young people have the feeling of alienation, which maybe will result in crime or social conflicts.
2.3 The influence of globalization on the migration of Chinese youth
Globalization greatly changed the situation of Chinese young people’s migration and employment. Because of the rapid development of economy and the process of urbanization, there in China appears a large scale of migration. It is estimated that there were about 80 million farmers moving from rural areas to urban areas for jobs, of which people under 35-year-old occupied 70 percent in 1995. In 2006 the migration expanded from 150 million to even 140 million, the proportion of people under 35-year-old accounted for 70 percent. There are thousands of young people holding a beautiful dream moving from countryside to city in hope of having a brighter future.
2.4 The influence of globalization on the employment of Chinese youth
The economic globalization stimulated employment, especially providing more opportunities for those competitive young people. In 2005, 12.45 million people were directly employed in foreign-invested enterprises accountings for 4.56% of the total urban employment of the same period. The development of foreign invested enterprises provided Chinese young people many opportunities. Foreign enterprises came to China with capital, talents, management and experiences, offering youth favorable job opportunities. For over a decade, many young people considered working at foreign enterprises especially in multinational corporations as an honor. Globalization brings opportunities for Chinese young people to work abroad. With the linkage between Chinese and the world economy becoming closer and closer, Chinese young people have more opportunities to study and work abroad, and their footprints spread all over the world. Globalization means intense competition. Chinese young people still bear great pressure of employment although the economy increases rapidly. In recent years, the employment rate of Chinese college graduates presented a downward trend，and the proportion of that in 2005 was 72.6%.
Considering the remnant influence inherited from China’s traditional planned economic system, the impacts on youth employment brought by globalization have been extremely strong in the course of transition to the market economy and industrialization. The youth are faced with severe employment challenges regardless of the numerous policies and measures taken by the Chinese government and social partners for promoting youth employment.
2.4.1 Youth Employment situation in China under the background of globalization
Globalization refers to trend of world economic and social integration, including the process of formation of common markets and game rules, and integration of cultures. In that process, all parties take various economic, political and cultural measures to compete globally for grabbing resources, interests and for gaining their say. In addition to impacts from global economic factors, labor markets are also subject to interference of political factors, where the outcomes hence become complex.
As newcomers in the markets, young people are faced with ever-increasing employment vulnerability in the context of increased labor market variables as a result of globalization. The employment hardness embedded into the following five aspects.
2.4.1.1 Limited Openings from Public Sector leading to intense competition
In the traditional system, State-owned institutions monopolized all sectors, which reserved huge amount of surplus labor force. In the transition course, such institutions have received a variety of ownership reforms and entered the market. Remaining State-owned institutions, which are relatively small in number, are mostly engaged in critical industries and sectors relating to the national economy and the people’s livelihood and offer relatively good pay and employment stability by virtue of their monopoly position, which has made them the desired employers of most young people. China’s first “School to work transition” survey shows that more than 50% young people wish to enter governmental agencies and State-owned enterprises, nearly 1/4 want to carve out their own business, and only about 1/4 desire employment in other types of institutions.
Opposite to the desire of the youth, jobs from the public sector are very limited. In 2004, China had 400 million people employed in non-agricultural sectors, only less than 38 million and 30 million of them were in public institutions and State-owned enterprises respectively, accounting for less than 10% and 8% separately and aggregately below 1/5 of the total. In general, jobs from public institutions are very limited.
Further, there are also very few new job opportunities in the sector. In 2004, there were 1 million government agencies, party agencies, social organizations and other public agencies in China and less than 300,000 State-owned justice person enterprises. Only some of them were in major and medium-sized cities. Regardless of the huge reduction of staff, the sector still has a considerable number of inefficient employees and has the problem of huge staff but low efficiency, which remains serious compared internationally. In that context, many public institutions have implemented the policy of “zero staff increase”, which has further reduced new openings and resulted in fiercer employment competition.
At present, jobs in the public sector generally require education above master’s degree, which has led to young people excessive pursuit of higher educational levels, bringing the admission rate of entrance examinations for master’s degree education to one several hundreds. The number of college graduates in China has reached 3 million in 2004, and about 500,000 of them have above master’s degrees. Many people compete fiercely for entering the public sector. Only one out of every several hundred people succeeds in public civilians’ examinations, and hundreds will register for examination even when there is only one vacancy, which is similarly seen in some monopoly industries. Besides, young people see relatively slow promotion after entering the sector due to the impossibility of quickly changing the traditional employment mechanism.
The acute unbalance between labor supply and demand in the public sector has made the employment of high-quality young people a very serious problem.
2.4.1.2 Jobs from traditional low-end advantageous sectors are becoming increasing insufficient
In the traditional planned economic system, China adopted the policy of closing the country to the international world and the economy ran in a closed manner. In 1978, the economy started to open up to the outside world, and then embarked on GATT negotiations in 1986 and WTO negotiations in 1995, which symbolize faster integration of China with the world economy. In 2001, China officially entered into the World Trade Organization. Throughout the course of the integration, the advantages China enjoy by virtue of its huge amount and low cost of rural labor force have been fully developed, China has gained significant shares of international markets of low-end products through such channels as processing sector trade. During the internationalization, many young rural people have found non-farming jobs, increased their income and promoted growth of the economy. The internationalization is an important source of China’s economic growth, industrialization, urbanization and employment increase.
However, globalization of developing countries is at all times under control of developed nations. In the international industry chain, developed countries control technologies and are key importers of products from developing economies. On one hand, developed countries gain huge profits and constantly narrow room for profit of processing industries of low technology content in developing economies by controlling the entire product processing and export chain, and in turn limit employment increase in terms of quantum and quality. On the other hand, developed nations limit technology transfers to a developing country, which hampers smooth adjustment of their domestic industry structures and often leads to trade deficit. To solve the deficit, they then exert pressure on developing economies for appreciation of the latter’s currencies, which further limits the development and the number of jobs in industries in the latter that are of low technology but high labor content.
To sum up, the unequal globalization dominated by developing economies will lead to an ever-expanding gap between developed nations and developing ones, and ever-decreasing job opportunities for general labor force in the latter. Although 200-300million laborers have been transferred from rural areas and the country’s urbanization rate has reached 40%, a huge amount of poorly qualified and skilled labor force still remains in rural areas and needs to be diverted to non-agricultural sectors. Pursuing fair globalization is the ultimate solution for promoting youth employment.
2.4.1.3 Under the pressure of globalization, youth human resources has been malignantly developed, which has resulted in insufficient supply of young labor force
China has a huge labor force supply in aggregate. According to the national census conducted in 2000, the population at working ages of 16 and above was 883.35 million, of which 688.89 million participated in labor market activities, including 115.28 million Young people aged between 16 and 24, accounting for 17%. In addition, there are nearly 10 million unemployed people in towns and cities, and the national net increase of working-age population exceeds 10 million people per annum. Compared with demand, the total labor force supply is huge.
New labor force demands mainly come from the private sector. Private enterprises run flexibly and have lower requirements on quality of labor force, thus being employers of a majority of the youth. According to China’s first “School to work transition” survey, nearly 70% young people work in private enterprises. Facing the pressure from global competition, the private sector makes every effort to lower labor cost, causing severe waste of young human resources. First, private enterprises only employ young people aged between 18 and 25, and replace them with new recruiters once they are beyond that “golden” section of age.
Second, they only use young employees but never provide training to them. Third, the youth lack employment protection and social security. According to said survey, more than 60% young people have not signed employment contracts or only signed contracts for less than 1 year, their average working hours per week are more than the nation’s statutory amount, their pay level is low, many of them enjoy no social security and welfares to which they are entitled, and most of them have never received any form of training. This practice of dealing with young human resources, just like draining the pond to get all the fish, has led to insufficiency of effective supply of young labor force, turned today’s labor force into tomorrow’s burden of society, and further exerted heavier gross and structural employment pressures.
In short, accession to globalization will often cause developing countries to pursue economic growth at the cost of inefficient resource utilization in the context of low economic development level in order to solve the problems of employment and survival, which will ultimately lead to waste of valuable resources, including young human resources.
2.4.1.4 Globalization has led to faster changes of technologies and ways of production, to which youth are difficult to adapt due to quality limitations
In general, general educational level of Chinese youth is ever improving as result of better economic growth and education quality, continuous enrollment rates of schools at all levels and constant expansion of higher education, most of them have received junior high school education, and the number enrolled in 2004 for general higher education reached 4.5 million. However, Chinese youth are remarkably disadvantageous in terms of educational level in the context of globalization. According to the 5th national census in 2000, 61% of youth had received junior high school education, 19% primary education, 8% senior high school and 7% secondary vocational education, and the figure for higher education was below 5%. Even though higher educational institutions are expanding enrollment year over year by 20% averagely, a broad gap still exists compared with the higher education enrollment rate of more than 30% in some developed nations.
Youth Educational Levels Information technology is the fundamental technology of globalization, which has not only created new patters of production and employment, but also reformed traditional production models. In China, most youth live a life on informal employment of poor technology content due to limitations of the economic development level, and the popularity of new production-related information technologies remains low among employed young people, who have far less opportunities of access to new information technology-based production patterns than their peers in developed countries. According to China’s first “school to work transition” survey, industries where youth are primarily employed include manufacturing (20%), wholesale and retail (15%), residents-aimed service (10%), information transmission and software (8%), transportation (7%) and board and lodging (6%) industries. 70% of youth take physical strength-based or simple technical jobs and only less than 20% have successfully got employed soon after leaving school. When young people in developed countries do modeling using advanced information technologies, most of Chinese youth is still learning simple charting.
In short, due to difference in economic development level, globalization with information technology as the feature will make it difficult for youth in developing countries to adapt to quality requirements of the new economy and cause an ever-expanding gap between them and other parts of the world if without artificially driven communication and transfer of technologies and knowledge to the countries. Lack of knowledge and technologies is worse than scarcity of materials.
Further, similarly due to young labor force’s quality being unable to adapt to the requirements of globalization, and to insufficient information, only an extremely low percent of young Chinese people get employed in foreign countries regardless of the ever-increasing number of them studying abroad.
2.4.1.5 Unemployment, underemployment and inactivity issues becoming more serious
In the context of globalization, bad labor market conditions have severely affected youth’s behavior there. Some good students will extend their school years for higher education, but doing so will only defer their entry into labor markets and will not ease the employment pressure, and they will even be faced with a higher unemployment rate than young people with lower education after their graduation and entry into the markets.
Most of young people go to labor markets after finishing secondary education. They are particularly difficult to find jobs and see the highest unemployment rate as they are not qualified for higher posts but unwilling to accept lower ones, for instance, the unemployment rate of each of the groups of youth of senior high school, technical school and college education is above 15%. On the other hand, they also involve underemployment reflected by insufficient income and their overtime percent is above the average (the percents of young people working 6 days and 7 days per week are 2% above the averages respectively).
Young people of poor educational level have no choice and will feel satisfied as long as they can find jobs, so their unemployment rate is the lowest. However, their underemployment rate is the highest. 8.2% of total employed work less than 3 days per week and the figure for employed young people aged between 16 and 19 is 8.7%.
In summary, in the context of globalization, employment pressure will exist for a long period in the youth labor market. There will be more young people falling in the state of underemployment reflected as insufficient working time or income, or in unemployment, and temporarily exit labor markets with the hope of returning there someday (1/4 of youth have withdrawn from labor markets with causes unidentified), the problems of unemployment, underemployment and inactivity have become worse, and young human resources have been wasted seriously.
Percents of Youth of Different Educational Levels in Inactivity,
Unemployment and Employment
2.4.2 Social Partners’ Measures Responding to Employment Impacts from Globalization
Just like all other countries in the world, China has taken many effective measures to deal with the impacts of globalization on youth employment, of which the core is to create job opportunities for young people.
2.4.2.1 Special preferential policies aiming at college graduates have helped solve the problem of structural unemployment of high-quality labor force
The Chinese government has launched files in recent three years consecutively to encourage college graduates’ employment, which contain some policy breakthroughs for employment through flows of the graduates, that is, a number of job opportunities are supported and created in western, grassroots and hard-condition regions to solve the employment problem of the graduates and meanwhile promote local economic and social development. The government bears costs of creating the jobs. The policy breakthroughs mainly involve removal of permanent registered residence restriction, future employment promises, preferred access to education, etc. In terms of employment promotion, these measures are substitutes instead of complements effects.
Besides, policies for promoting flow of college graduates for employment also include removal of unauthorized and unreasonable administrative charges upon college graduates taking jobs in provinces or municipalities other than their origins. Cities at and below provincial capital level have canceled residence registration restrictions on non-local college graduates. Cities above provincial capital level should also loosen such restrictions and simplify relevant procedures as needed. This policy is a genuine market-oriented action going for the promotion of youth employment.
The core of these policies is to attract college graduates to nonpublic employers through improving law enforcement and services for them, enhancing employment conditions in nonpublic institutions and protecting the legal rights and interests of college graduates working for them. Specific processes include supervising and urging the employers to sign employment contracts, pay remunerations and cover social security for their college-graduate employees. These measures help ease the structural employment pressure of college graduates and improve the quality of their employment.
These policies primarily involve the exemption of registration and administrative charges to college graduates in start-up stage of their own businesses, which is equal to a type of financial subsidy used to ease employment pressure. The policies are apparently temporary and are not intended to promote stable entrepreneurship by youth.
2.4.2.2 Provide unemployed youth with help and support based on neighborhoods as the platforms
China’s labor market structure consists of “four levels of governments, four tiers of administration and five layers of networks, under the fourth level of governments (district/county governments) are organs (sub-districts) dispatched by the governments, under each sub-district are many resident autonomous organizations (neighborhoods), and each neighborhood is comprehensive of a number of residents’ committees (residents’ buildings). Faced with the ever-increasing severity of the employment situation, governments have strengthened the construction and improvement of the system of employment administration and service organizations and set up social security platforms in sub-districts, neighborhoods and townships based on existing organizational networks to manage rural and urban labor force and employment as a whole, bring into full play the service functions of neighborhood in terms of employment and social security, and have thus established channels offering practical help to youth. The following work has been done based on sub-districts and neighborhoods as the platforms:
2.4.2.2.1 Obtain a full knowledge of conditions of youth not in employment
Through home interviews, some neighborhoods have achieved a full knowledge of young people not in employment and college and secondary technical school graduates covering cause of unemployment, family condition, ideological trends, skills, strong points and job requirements, hence creating conditions for taking appropriate measures to help or support them. At present, the Chinese government is proceeding with the “golden security” project, under which a nationwide integrated, efficient and practical labor protection information system will be established, which will further help promote youth employment.
2.4.2.2.2 Provide youth with living relief and help through diversified channels
Local governments and neighborhoods have carried out pertinent activities to help and support young people out of employment depending on their respective circumstances. For instance, help is offered to each “zero-employment household” by finding a job for one child of the household; when conditions permit, cities and neighborhoods organize college graduates registered unemployment with them to participate in temporary social jobs, public welfare activities, or work on internship for certain pay; and civil affairs administrations provide temporary relief with reference to local “basic living security” standard to those prevented from employment due to such reasons as illness and identified to have no income source. These measures have to some extent mitigated financial difficulties of unemployed youth.
2.4.2.2.3 Organize and develop new jobs in diversified forms
Primary practices include selecting capable young people and graduates enthusiastic about neighborhood services to take grassroots labor protection jobs through public recruiting during the construction of labor protection platforms of sub-districts and neighborhoods, and provide support to enterprises absorbing young people according to documented policies regardless of their forms of ownership.
However, the current situation indicates that the support to youth employment is not powerful enough, which generally excludes post-specific allowances and social security subsidies, and less public welfare jobs are offered to youth.
2.4.2.2.4 Permit unemployment registration and access to employment services.
By presenting certificates from their colleges or universities, college graduates unable to get employed more than half a year after graduation and requesting jobs are permitted to fulfill unemployment registration with the labor protection administrations in the cities or counties where their permanent residence were registered before going to college or university. Public job centers and neighborhood labor protection agencies will provide them with free-of-charge employment services.
2.4.2.3 Education and Training for Youth
Education and training for youth is the key measure to promote youth employment. Specific practices include:
2.4.2.3.1 Youth “Vocational Internship” Program
In recent years, a “vocational internship” program has been launched in some developed regions specifically for young unemployed people, under which some technologically advanced enterprises of better management and certain publicity in their respective industries are selected as internship employers, where young unemployed people under the program work on internship at some posts of high technology content for three to six months, but in no case for more than one year, in order to improve their competitiveness in job hunting. For the young people working on internship, governments provide living expense allowance and cover comprehensive insurance for the internship duration, and also certain compensation to the employers. The program has gained praise and appreciation from enterprises, young unemployed people and their families. The program can help young people acquire professional skills, working experience, labor law and regulation knowledge and spirit of respect to job that match developments of new industries, but is faced with many limitations during its implementation, mainly arising from the prerequisite that economic growth engines, potential job opportunities must be available in the local places, and that the governments must be able to afford it financially.
2.4.2.3.2 Establish public training bases
Some public training bases have been established also in eastern regions to provide free-of-charge vocational skill training and practicing facilities to educational and training institutions of all types, and to provide vocational skill identification services for promoting the cultivation of highly skilled human resources.
2.4.2.3.3 Provide entrepreneurship training
By improving international experiences depending on conditions in China, the
Chinese government and its social partners have developed many entrepreneurship training programs, which, among others, aim at college students and young unemployed people, and primarily involve the following components: improving young people’s awareness and basic skills of entrepreneurship through providing them with entrepreneurship training; offering business opening guidance to help business carvers obtain fundamental business startup skill; provide enterprise incubation to enhance business carvers’ physical operating capabilities; provide financing services to improve the carvers’ awareness of good faith and ability of capital operation; and offer follow-up services to promote their business running capabilities. However, all associated chains are still under progress and only a very limited number of young people can enjoy the services.
2.4.2.3.4 Provide rural labor force with internal-migrant employment training and training of technologies applicable in rural areas
Funds are offered from governments to finance training of law promulgation, common knowledge of living and production skills to young labor force from rural areas in order to heighten the stability of their internal migration employment, and training of technologies applicable in rural areas to young people working in the areas to help improve their productivity.
2.4.2.3.5 Improve vocational education
In consideration of the current situation that China is in short of skilled labor force and in limited supply of access to education, the country will make effort to improve vocational education in a relatively long period. Specific measures include the following. First, enlarge financial investment in construction of vocational education infrastructure, such as school building and teacher training, with particular focus placed on rural areas. Second, reform the mechanism of vocational education and encourage diversified cooperation between eastern and western regions, cities and rural areas, and schools and enterprises. Third, establish the student support system for students from poor families, including arranging support from government finance, organizing the students to participate in part-work and part-study, covering students from poor families under national student loans, and offering tuition reduction or exemption, living expense allowance and appropriate vocational skill identification fee reduction to students from such families. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go.
2.4.2.3.6 Training in Enterprises
It is also a focus of the government to promote the improvement of on-the-job training of youth to continuously improve their adaptability to new technologies.
2.4.3 Recommended Countermeasures against Globalization Impacts on Youth
Youth problems will be increasingly highlighted along with the progress of globalization, the development of China’s economy and society and the gradual improvement of its market economic system, and will become among the most important social problems. The following recommendations are proposed in response to the current situation and challenges in employment of Chinese youth:
2.4.3.1 The United Nations should make greater effort to promote global resolution of youth problems
As a matter of fact, it was expressly brought forward in the Millennium Declaration released on the Millennium Conference to “formulate and implement strategies to provide opportunities for young people around the world to find due productive jobs” , proposing new political undertakings for solving the employment problem of youth around the world and new types of partnerships entered into for that purpose by governments of various countries and global organizations, putting youth-related public policies under the entire employment policy, and making full employment as the foremost goal of global economic and social strategies as well as national policies. The UN employment policy network has later been established to offer views and experiences of the best solutions to the challenge of youth employment.
In the coming 10 years, the world’s young population will continue to expand, with the growth mainly from developing countries, including Asia as one of the major sources of the growth. Therefore, the international community with UN as the major part should make in-dept research of Asian youth problems by topic and by country in order to provide reference for the formulation of pertinent policies and measures. To deal with the challenge of globalization, public policies for promoting youth employment are required to be global and national. All countries, particularly the developed ones, should review, reconsider and adjust old policies and implement new policies to pursue social development benefiting all people, and to ensure the sustainability of the global economy, society and environment. In that regard, global strategies must be mandatory to some extent and may not exclude consideration of the actual conditions of developing nations.
Global policies for promoting youth employment should place focus particularly on the communication and development of knowledge and technologies to and among young people in developing countries.
2.4.3.2 Reform the public education system to strengthen its connection with labor market needs
Educational, vocational training and labor market policies should be reviewed, reconsidered and adjusted to create favorable conditions for young people’s smooth transition from schools, colleges and universities to jobs, and a good start for their future career lives. Services and support from labor markets should be extended upstream, and just like the reversal pressure mechanism of university entrance examinations on primary and secondary school education, practical and effective vocational education and guidance should be implemented since primary school education to provide clear occupation directions. On the contrary, common education as a way of offering knowledge and cultivating the ability to acquire knowledge should not train students using the methods of scientific research personnel training in order to pursue the knowledge and abilities required in scientific research, and should instead play the role of occupation guiding. While the occupation directing function of diploma education gets diminished and eliminated, its reversal pressure effect will decline increasingly and only in that way can the vicious cycle of poor education and training, inability to find good gobs and poor life of young people be broken, and jobs and social justice be brought to youth. In this regard, UN should play the role it ought to play.
2.4.3.3 Formulate employment-promoting policies benefiting all young people
Due to limited financial strength of the nation, most of prevailing policies only benefit minority of youth. In the future, all these policies are to be extended to all young people, so that they can really benefit all members of the young population. In this regard, UN should again play the role it is supposed to have.
3 Chinese young people concern and review the effect of the globalization
Globalization is both opportunities and challenges to China, the most populous developing country. Chinese government considers that the tendency of economic globalization is deeply influencing many aspects such as global economy, politics and social life. In the process of economic globalization, the status and situation of different countries are very different. Developed countries enjoy the benefit of globalization, while most developing countries are suffering the pain of poverty, which is not only adverse to the development of the world economy but also threatening the peace of the world. We need and all-win economic globalization among all the countries under the rules of equality, fairness and coexistence. Chinese youth take part in the economic globalization actively. At the same time, they deeply concern with and reflect on the negative effects of globalization, mainly at the following four aspects: First, disparity between rich and poor. The wealth gap is widening between developing country and developed country. This result is opposite to the ideal of global fairness and Justice. Second, environmental deterioration. On one hand China is the factory of the world, on the other hand China becomes a refuse dump where some developed countries dispose of their industrial waste. Chinese youth is worried and discontented about that. Third, the development of national industry. With the rapid growth of foreign enterprises, national industry yielded step by step. Fourth, the inheritance of national culture. Economic globalization brings the cultural globalization. It remains a problem how Chinese youth treat the traditional culture and western culture in the right way and how to face the cultural demand under the background of globalization. In addition, under the background of globalization, the popular thought of consumption among youth is inconsistent with the lack of per capita resources, which is also an important aspect of the negative effects of globalization.
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