Students show purchasing power

Chinese college students spent a total of 685 billion yuan ($99 billion) last year, with each spending more than 1,400 yuan a month on average, according to a survey released in Beijing on Tuesday.

The survey was conducted by the China Campus Market Association, a nongovernmental organization that bridges the needs of college students with company resources and products.

It polled almost 27,000 college students from 2,300 higher education institutions nationwide.

The survey found that three main things generally mainly constituted student expenditures. These were daily life expenses such as food and clothes, digital products like cellphones and laptops and finally, academic or skills training, including learning foreign languages.

The survey also estimated that the so-called Engel’s Coefficient— or proportion of food spending to total consumption — among China’s college student group was 32 percent, which indicated a relatively high living standard.

Survey leader Si Yaqing, a professor of the School of Economics and Management at BeijingUniversity of Posts and Telecommunications, said markets in the three spending areas still had a lot of potential waiting to be tapped, because China has a very large college student population.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education showed that as of 2015, the total number of students at colleges and universities in China reached 34.5 million.

“They are active consumers, creating golden business opportunities for many industries and companies,” Si said.

Taking academic and skill training as an example, he said, the current market size was estimated to be no more than 40 billion yuan a year. However, as more students received training to be prepared for overseas studies and there are still 14 percent students surveyed said they have never paid to receive any form of training, it can be anticipated that the market will grow bigger in the future, Si said.