This year, there are altogether 2.8 million students who graduated from college, an increase of over 30 percent compared with last year. The increase in the number of college graduates aggravates the already tough employment market.

But according to Lin Huiqing, director of the College Students Department of the Ministry of Education, China has realized its goal of employing 70 percent of college graduates set for this year.

“We have fully fulfilled the goal that we set earlier this year. By September 1, the employment rate of college graduates had reached 73 percent, an increase of 3 percentage points compared to that in the same time last year, or an increase of 560,000 employed.”

Half of the graduates this year choose to work in privately owned companies and foreign invested companies, or set up their own business. In addition, an increasing number of students have gone to work in the less developed west China regions.

Otherwise, voluntary service has become the first choice of many students. In the national voluntary service program for the western part of the country, a total of 6,212 new members were recruited from universities, 4,000 more than that of last year.
 
In the meantime, 18 provinces and cities launched local voluntary service programs with 70 million yuan (US$8.5 million) investment, sending 6,939 campus volunteers into the fields of agriculture, education, health and poverty relief in underdeveloped areas within the regions.
  
Statistics from many universities show that the number of graduate volunteers to west and northeast China has increased. At Tsinghua University, one of the most famous universities in China, 43 percent of graduates chose grass root institutes and businesses. As a result, west China’s Gansu Province received 2,800 more graduates than last year.

“Thanks to the development strategy of the country and national policies, employment for Chinese college students has really made a concrete step forward,” Lin added.

In fact, China has adopted a lot of measures to help college graduates find jobs, including setting courses on finding jobs, creating more career opportunities, establishing employment information networks, and encouraging graduates to work in less developed regions or start their own businesses.

However, there are still problems. For example, commitments to providing business loans or favorable taxation policies have not yet been put into practice in some regions and market information has not been easily accessed or adequately used.

Education official Lin Huiqing also points out that related Chinese departments will make joint efforts to create an even better employment environment for college graduates.

“We will further modify our related policies, call off policy barriers that put limits on the employment of college graduates at local levels, further foster, explore and regulate the employment market and adopt more positive policies to encourage students to work in west China and less developed regions.”

It is said that the number of college graduates will continue to grow next year and reach 3.4 million. Their employment will still be a great challenge for China.

(CRI.com, Xinhua News Agency September 29, 2004)