Demographics of China

China is a populous country with more than 1.3 billion people. Do you know China’s population composition, gender ratio, and elderly issues? Chinese people pay great attention to education. Each year, China has numerous college graduates, with the figure expected to reach 8.2 million in 2018, but does the job market have enough jobs? Chinese people respect elderly people. However, with continuous urbanization, more and more young people don’t live with their parents. Who is taking care of the elderly now? Chinafrica will discuss these issues over the next few months.

After 40 years of reform and opening up, China has become the world’s second largest economy. However, China still has many social problems, which in turn make it a country full of challenges but, on the other hand, a land of numerous business opportunities.

Difficulty in education and employment

Due to its large population using available resources, China faces many problems, prominent in its education and employment sectors.

As for those who wish to pursue the education sector, China is a country with huge potential. It has a large population with a huge market demand, while the existing

An edited excerpt from

When in China: A Guide to Chinese Business Culture

educational facilities cannot satisfy the fast growing demand, particularly in pre-school education enrollment.

Challenges with enrollment have become a major setback. Take Xi’an in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province as an example. In order to get their children registered at a kindergarten, many parents have to queue up in front of the kindergarten at 3:00 a.m. The situation is the same in Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province. Parents wait in the line for two days in order to secure enrolment in a pre-school class at Shenzhen Nanshan Bilingual School.

For those who don’t have time to wait in the line, hiring others to stand in is an option. Apart from the available local education, the international market for teenagers to study abroad also has huge potential.

Since China started its reform and opening up in late 1978, over 5.19 million Chinese people have studied abroad, according to figures from China’s Ministry of Education. The United States, Australia and the United Kingdom are the most popular destinations. Some reputable British universities have targeted the Chinese market and have setup campuses in China alongside cross-border educational partnerships with Chinese universities so that Chinese students can attain British degrees in China.

The model of “studying abroad in China” is attractive to those who cannot afford to

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study in foreign countries. Since China started its reform and opening up, the country has changed from a planned economy to a market economy.

Such a change makes the flow of talented individuals a normal phenomenon. In the past, college graduates were assigned jobs arranged by the state. After a college graduate was assigned a job, they would be permanently employed there until retirement age in most cases.

Beginning in the 1990s, there was a shift; college graduates were no longer assigned jobs. Employers started searching for talented individuals in the job market and college graduates began looking for jobs by means of individual application.

As colleges and universities increased enrollment, the number of college graduates rose over the years, with college graduates now finding it difficult to find good jobs.

The ratio of applicants to available employment is very high; in some extreme cases, around 1,000 applicants compete for one job. People describe such a situation as “a full corridor of doctors, a full auditorium of masters and a full playground of bachelors.” The ferocious competition in the job market is described as “hordes of troops and horses crossing a single-log bridge.

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