Have you heard of the Singapore Taxi Driver’s blog? It’s written by a Stanford graduate who went to Singapore to work in the burgeoning biotech education/industry that Singers seems to have the hots for. Absolute details are sketchy, but it appears that Mingjie Cai ran foul of some governmental politicking and got kicked out of his job. He is now a taxi-driver.

Singapore is aghast. An experienced scientist in a hot field (and a Stanford graduate, no less), working as a…a…taxi driver??!! The thud you may have heard was the sound of every Asian parent in the city-state fainting where they stood.

Then, no sooner do we get over this when I read about the millions (yes, you read that right) of University graduates in China that are not only unemployed but, where they can scrape a position somewhere, earning less money than the (mostly unskilled) migrant workers that move from province to province.

My first thought, upon reading that article was, I wonder if the Chinese are going to give the Indians a run for their money? According to the Asia Times, 6.1 million graduates (most of them postgrads) entered the mainland Chinese job market over the northern summer, with most of them holding majors in computer science, law and accounting. Will we see an Oriental Infosys? Satyam? Wipro? Price Waterhouse?

My second thought was sympathy with the parents of these children, who’ve spent (often) their life savings to pay for their child’s education. Throughout Asia, education trumps all (in China, education has been the shining beacon throughout several millennia of history), so to find that your daughter/son cannot get a job even as a nanny because “employers are said to prefer peasant girls with experience instead of English-speaking graduates in business administration” is a heavy and bitter blow indeed.

I blame the Chinese government myself. It’s wanted to have its cake and eat it too. That is, have a tightly-controlled, totalitarian government, ostensibly under communist rule, but still reap the heady delights of neoliberal capitalist economics. Don’t these guys even listen to their own propaganda? I can’t believe, for example, that some individuals — using only publicly available information — were able to insulate themselves from the current economic crisis, but the most populous nation on Earth, with literally millions of geniuses floating about, was happy enough to make hay while the sun shone, and thus completely disregard the rumbling portents regarding their own citizens. (But really, since when did any Asian country care about its own citizens?)

And, really, it’s not as though the Chinese government didn’t see it coming. From Asia Times again:

The oversupply of college graduates started in 1999 when Chinese leaders decided to counter some of the effects of the Asian financial crisis by boosting university enrollments. They had hoped that a generation of well-heeled educated urbanites would boost domestic consumption and help reduce China’s dependence on exports.

Enrollment rose quickly, from 3% of college-age students in the 1980s to 20% today. The trend coincided with a very public effort by Beijing to begin a process of retooling its manufacture-driven economy into a high-knowledge economy.

But even when the economy was booming and creating more jobs, Beijing was struggling to find employment for its growing number of diploma holders [my emphasis --ksa]….

The global financial crisis, with its hiring freezes and credit crunch that choked enterprises’ expansion, made a bad situation only worse.

It may have made a bad situation worse, but it isn’t as though China is a company with shareholders. It’s an entire country that doesn’t need to answer to whiny little investors, can bravely follow long-term strategies and can afford to take the kind of losses that a public company can’t (unless you’re a Wall Street bank, of course, in which case, please continue with business as usual). Still, this flagrant blindness to ten years of increasing reality is unsettling. We’re used to the United States thinking in such a fashion. But China as well? The mind boggles.

Just to add lemon juice and salt to the paper cut, Smug Bastard Yi Weimin, China’s Human Resources & Social Security Minister, allegedly said:

It is high time that young diploma holders lowered their expectations and began to see the potential of many once neglected but well-paid jobs, he told the media. “As a result of the crisis, there will be a change in values for our graduates,” Yi said.

A “change in values”, do you like that? Like the way he shifted the blame from cock-eyed government policy to the individual? For China, in particular, it’s a downright arrogant way of telling the entire population to throw five thousand years of culture out the window. Just like that! :: clicks fingers :: And thus another Asian government screws over its own people.

Taking a personal and meta view of this strange turn of events, this has dire implications for parents such as J and I, trying to chart a future for our children. If an education isn’t good enough to land a solid job any more, what’s left? As the world ages, an obvious employment niche is in elderly care. (When was the last time you met an unemployed nurse?) But that means sheer pragmatism, at a time when our children are thinking of becoming — not nurses or doctors, but — astronauts, robotics engineers, archeologists or research chemists. That’s a whole different kettle of pink slips. I’m happy to support their fantasies but wonder if we’re ever going to get back to a time of clever invention, unbridled optimism and boundless energy. Or if we’ll be doomed, as parents, to see their dreams dashed on the sharp rocks of reality. I know which I think is more likely. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

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