Tackling unemployment among university graduates will be China’s priority next year as the economy falters, Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, said at the weekend.
The attention given by state media to Mr Wen’s visit to a Beijing university was the latest sign of the government’s increasing fear of widespread unrest as growth declines much faster than expected.
“We have made finding jobs for university students our top priority and will come out with some measures to make sure all graduates have somewhere constructive to direct their energy,” Mr Wen told students at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
He said the government was also extremely concerned about migrant workers who had been laid off in the cities. By the end of November, 10m migrant workers had lost their jobs nationwide and 4.85m of those had returned home, according to government figures.
A survey last week by a government think-tank estimated the number of recent graduates who have been unable to find work at 1.5m. Tertiary institutions are expected to churn out another 6.5m graduates next year.
In recent weeks, a growing chorus of official voices has raised the spectre of unrest. “If growth falls below 8 per cent then that will create enormous problems in terms of unemployment,” according to Zhang Xiaojing, director of the Macroeconomy Office of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“There will be lots of laid-off migrant workers returning to the villages, not to mention the many college graduates and this will affect social stability.”
Mr Zhang linked the continuing riots in Greece directly to the global economic crisis and said that Beijing was wary of a similar situation erupting in China.
Sporadic protests by laid-off workers in export-oriented industries have increased in recent months and large-scale riots have become a common occurrence in China in recent years, especially in poorer rural areas.
The State Council, China’s highest governing body, issued a decree to local governments over the weekend ordering them to create jobs for migrant workers who had returned to their home towns.
The creation of a huge population of educated unemployed is worrying for the ruling Communist party, which is keenly aware of the historic role disgruntled students have played in inciting rebellion. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown in which party elders ordered troops to fire on student-led demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
Mao Zedong, who led the Communists to victory in 1949, was himself an educated son of a rich peasant who had his scholarly ambitions thwarted.
●China offered Rmb130bn ($19bn) of loans for Taiwan companies operating on the mainland, Bloomberg reported, as the ruling parties of both governments laid out proposals to boost financial ties. Beijing would provide the financing over three years and also purchase $2bn worth of flat-panel displays from the island’s companies, Wang Yi, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office, said at the end of a weekend forum.
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