Job hunters queue up outside Shanghai Gymnasium. Shanghai held job fairs at several districts on Feb 14 and 15, offering more than 30,000 job opportunities.

More than 6 million new graduates will flood onto Chinese jobs market in 2009. These ambitious and restless young people will present a major challenge for the government. While students are being advised to lower their job expectations in the face of the economic crisis, experts are urging the government to improve the country's social security system and modernize China's development model.

Searching for job security - Chen Zao

After a quick dinner with friends, Chen Zao (not her real name) spent the rest of Christmas Eve in her dormitory reading an old exercise book. The revelry on the streets didn't interest the 25-year-old at all. She sat the whole night brooding on her chances of passing the civil service exam she would be sitting two days later.

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The result of the exam might change the rest of her life. Making a frantic last minute effort, Chen Zao sat up reading all night. The next day, she left for Shanghai to take the exam.

In October 2008, Chen Zao became one of 6.1 million campus job seekers. With the good old school days gone forever Chen's life was now occupied with round after round of job fairs, written exams and interviews.

Chen Zao is expecting to graduate from Beijing Normal University with a Master's Degree in Criminal Law in 2009. But so far no company has offered her a job. Things are no better for her classmates.

All over the country, college graduates are facing the same situation. A friend told Chen Zao that in Wuhan and Tianjin, cities with large numbers of colleges and universities, no more than 10 percent of final year students had secured a job by the end of 2008. In Chen's class, only a handful of students had found jobs and their families were rumored to be well-connected.