From Overseas Press

White-collar workers are China's newest underclass

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-06-23 14:28

Fast-growing white-collar workers constitute the newest underclass in China, which is an unprecedented and troublesome development in China, said an article in Newsweek on June 20.

According to the article, the estimated 1 million white-collar workers are known as "ants", for their willingness to work, their dirt-poor living conditions, and the seeming futility of their efforts. Since the '90s, Chinese universities have doubled their admissions, far outpacing the job market for college grads, which has resulted in the large growing number of ants.

The article said that many grew up in impoverished rural towns and villages and attended second- or third-tier schools in the provinces, trusting that studying hard would bring them better lives. But when they move on and apply for jobs in Beijing or Shanghai or any of China's other booming metropolises, they receive a nasty shock. "These ants have high ambitions but virtually no practical skills," Prof. Zhou Xiaozheng, a leading sociologist at the People's University of China, was quoted as saying.

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With the number of these ants increasingly growing, the article pointed out that discontent is rising among the ants, which is a potentially explosive situation. Salary cuts are one of their complaints. Blue-collar wages have actually soared recently, while white-collar pay is shrinking due to a massive glut of university graduates, said the article.

Also, finding work is not easy for them. The article quoted official Chinese labor statistics as saying that at least one in eight is permanently unemployed. And those who get jobs don't always find work in their chosen fields. Nearly a third of Beijing's ants are employed in "sales in private business." For tech engineers, that often means peddling low-end electronic gear for the city's computer wholesalers.

And their living conditions are not satisfactory. Tangjialing, one of six ant colonies in the Beijing suburbs, used to be a quiet farming village of 3,000 or so, but in the past few years it has mushroomed to a population of 50,000 mostly underemployed young people, crammed into a trash-strewn warren of cramped alleys and subdivided rooms, said the article. "Ants are educated. They speak foreign languages. They're Internet-savvy. It's that potential for trouble that has the government worried," Zhou said in the article. "If they aren't satisfied with their living conditions and want to start a movement, it becomes a huge problem."