Social equity for youth
0 
Following 30 years of reform and opening up, China's educated youth are split into two distinctive groups. Some of them, benefiting from the country's growing economic success, have become intellectual elites with dominant social status. Their less-fortunate peers, who missed these opportunities, are still struggling at the bottom rungs of society.
In such an unfavorable context, they will likely turn into so-called "angry youth", radically critical citizens furious over any malpractice by public powers, and thereby sowing the seeds of social inequity. This group, who defy mainstream values, will have profound and far-reaching impact on Chinese society.
The social underdogs are those who usually stay in cities after leaving school. They do not have stable jobs or local household registration.
This group mainly consists of three kinds: idle youth from urban families relying on their parents' income; unemployed college graduates from the rural areas swarming to cities looking for jobs or the so-called "ant tribe"; a new generation of migrant workers born after the 1980s who have had secondary education and who fight for their livelihoods in cities but are still identified as farmers.
Among the three, we should pay utmost attention to jobless college graduates from rural families, especially the new generation of migrant workers. The new generation of migrant workers accounts for 5 to 6 percent of the total population of 130 million migrant workers.
The difference between jobless urban and rural youth and the new generation migrant workers is that the rural laborers have no basic living guarantee in cities once they lose jobs. As city dwellers, their urban counterparts can however continue with their parasitic life, either relying on social welfare or on parents to get by.
Irrespective of the family backgrounds of these "angry youth", most of them attribute their miserable lives to unfair social systems, rather than themselves.
Go to Forum >>0 Comments